


Et Tu, Brute?

by BasicBaroness



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blackmail, F/M, Lawless city, Minor Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Slow Burn, Violence, all the fun stuff, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-05-29 23:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15083828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBaroness/pseuds/BasicBaroness
Summary: Thirty years after the initial Super Boom, and the country is in shambles. The only thing holding the city of Sburb together is Alpha, an organization of powered inhumans that act as the law in a city where the law does not exist otherwise. If you have the influence, the freedom and the skill to be accepted into Alpha, you live life as a celebrity and a hero.Dave Strider does not have the influence, the freedom, or the skill, and he lives his life as a mildly recognisable menace. On the streets he is Redshift; a masked street Super running errands for a mobster named English to get by. But there's just one tiny little catch: English knows Dave's real identity, and could have his sister shot in the time it takes to make a phone call. Dave is trapped, and just when he thought hiding the fact from his psychic sister was hard, English calls him in one day with an ultimatum.In order to keep his sister safe, Dave would do anything. However, helping a mob boss lure and kidnap a teenage dog girl turned out to be a lot more complicated than it sounded on paper.





	1. Premonitions Over Breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I decided to start writing fanfics as practice, and even though I haven't really read or caught up to Homestuck in years... well, you never _really_ leave the red and green team, so this was a natural choice. It's a gorgeous dynamic and so help me I will carry this little pairing to my grave.
> 
> I'll be releasing chapters more or less as I write them. Thank you for reading!

“I saw something today,” Rose hummed hesitantly one morning, sipping a glass of juice without making eye contact.  
“You know I don’t like it when you tell me your hocus pocus,” Dave replied quickly, buttering his toast so aggressively that he tore it. She clicked her tongue, and he sighed. “Sorry. I just don’t like letting premonitions cloud my unwaveringly flawless judgement.”  
“But Dave, It’s really quite important,” she whispered. In the next room, her girlfriend slept unawares. Unawares that they were powered inhumans, that is. 

Dave and his twin sister had been on their own for a long time. Since they were twelve or so. The city of Sburb wasn’t ready for inhumans, and while the place was starting to rebuild now, the initial societal fallout had seen them both turned to the streets. For every kid that had been taken in by some grand powered mentor, there were two that hadn’t been so lucky. Dave and Rose had been that unlucky pair, of course, and here they were. Their house was falling to bits, and they were afraid to install so much as a nail for fear of asbestos. Even with Dave, Rose, and Kanaya working two jobs each, it wasn’t enough. Dave had to take on other work. Work that made breakfast awkward, because his sister’s ability to glimpse he future had given away what he’d done within a week of joining an inhuman gang for a Sburbian crime boss.

“You always say it’s important,” he countered, not meeting her eye. Even if he had, he’d been wearing his shades since the moment he opened his eyes that morning.  
“That’s because I don’t tell you anything that isn’t important.” Rose stood from her seat. “I believe something may be…. On the brink of change. With English, I mean.”

He fought the urge not to sigh audibly. She was always on about him leaving English’s mob, but she just didn’t get it. Not really. She knew he was working with English as his masked persona, Redshift, committing low-level crime and collecting debts in less-than-sporting ways from the people that owed English money. But her glimpses of the future didn’t always give her the full picture, and they weren’t always right. For instance, she didn’t yet know that the reason he didn’t leave English was that when he had tried to leave, English revealed that he had known the whole time who Dave actually was. Had his guy parked across the street from his and Rose’s apartment actually facetime him, just to prove that leaving would be…. Inadvisable. Now his hands were tied, and he cursed himself every day for being so careless.

He shot a nervous glance toward the window before replying. “Is that so.” He didn’t phrase it like a question, taking his toast with him as he headed for the door.  
“You don’t sound very interested,” Rose chided.  
“All I want right now is to go for a run and not think about the things that are slowly crushing my entire life, if that isn’t too high an order.” He frowned ever so slightly at her, doing his best not to look like a tired, angry toddler.  
“It’s about Green Flash,” she whispered, taking a few steps toward him. “I feel she might be in mortal danger.”

That one… was new. Green Flash? She was one of those pompous morons from Alpha, Sburb’s patchwork governing body comprised of do-gooder inhumans. They maintained what little order there was in Sburb, trying to keep rampant crime at bay. The whole city was one big, vacuous bad neighbourhood, save for the two blocks in each direction around the Alpha building uptown. 

Being a lackey, willing or not, for one of Sburb’s most active crime bosses meant you were likely to run into street-level Alpha members, and Dave had met this particular specimen on several occasions where Alpha had attempted to find English with raids. Of all the painful optimists, Green Flash was the most painful of all. Dave had no idea what she had to be so hopeful about – she was one of those inhumans that had major physical mutations that couldn’t be supressed. Unlike most of them, she had no other person to go home as, and lived her life in constant spotlight as a result. Sounded like a downright depressing way to live, but she was always on and on about ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘you don’t have to be a criminal’ blah blah. Because she was from Alpha, she didn’t get how stuck you could get without a silver spoon in your mouth. Or she was just delusional. In any case, Dave spared her very little thought on any occasion where she wasn’t actively in his way.

“Hey Rose,” Dave sighed, opening the door and holding it open with his foot so he could toss the crust of his toast into the trash. “You wanna know what Green Flash and state traffic law have in common?”  
She levelled him with a stare and tossed her hand at him. “You’re ridiculous. What do they have in common, Dave?”  
“Neither of them are my problem. See ya.” He let the door slide shut behind him and trudged down the hall. 

As usual, the neighbour across the hall was blaring his TV, the hallway smelled of mildew and puke and the stairs creaked like they would collapse under him with each step. Dave shoved his earbuds in and picked a playlist at random, not really caring this morning. He just wanted to be away from the world for as long as he could spare.


	2. Dave Ex Machina

Jade liked mornings on the docks. Sure, there were shifty people around, and the fisheries kind of smelled bad, but nobody bothered her. People here kept their eyes on their feet or on their work, and while there was foot traffic in the mornings, most were people on their way to work, who had little time to pay attention to those around them. Perfect for someone like Jade, who had to hide in plain sight. 

Her music thrummed, her earphones held in her ears by the fabric headband that clung around her skull. This served two purposes: as mentioned, to keep her earphones in, and also, to hide that her ears were pointed, hairy, and sitting several inches higher on her head than they reasonably should have been – and if left exposed, they would render her recognisable to even the most inattentive people in Sburb as Green Flash, an active street hero who had no secret identity, and who valued these mornings of peace above all others. 

Still, they didn’t come without their costs. As a chill breeze wafted in from the sea, she stopped at a bench to rub at her eye. Part of her disguises often involved switching her glasses for contacts. She hated them, and it took everything in her power not to pinch the stupid things out and hurl them over the railing beside her. Jade had to remind herself not to rub too much and busied herself fixing her shoelaces instead, and tugging her heavy ponytail in two parts so it would tighten again in the elastic. 

She stood on a long pedestrian bridge, spanning the end a river that spilled into the grey expanse of ocean in the near distance. Foot traffic was moderate already, and the place would only get busier as ships began to return with full nets. Jade quickly turned back toward the bench and the railing, reluctant to look into the crowd too long. Around these parts, people were about as likely to ask an Alpha member’s autograph as they were to stab one in the neck with the pen. If her cousin knew she was here, she’d never hear the end of it. Which was fair, considering she would give him the same, were their situations reversed. 

Her song ended, and a shout caught her attention in the quiet intro of the next track. She carefully tugged her earphones out and stuffed them in the pocket of her yoga pants, sneaking a look over her shoulder at the commotion.

A child, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, was wrestling a large man for a shoulder bag. Whose it had been initially wasn’t clear, since they were both tugging violently, and while the man was obviously stronger, the young girl was lighter and clung tight as he swung her around, trying to dislodge her. Jade watched as people began to shuffle nervously around the commotion, wondering if she should intervene. On the one hand, John kept telling her not to get involved with every street scuffle she came across. On the other, Sburb wasn’t going to clean itself up.

“Hey!” She called, squaring herself as effectively as she could. Which wasn’t very – she had been told she was about as intimidating as a week old puppy. By more than one person. She tried not to let it hurt her enthusiasm, though. “What’s going on here?”  
“Butt out,” snarled the girl, barely sparing Jade a glance as she planted a foot on the man’s arm to try and wrestle the bag free.  
“This brat feels like dying today is what,” the man hissed through his teeth. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, kid.”  
“I’m not scared of English or his dogs!” Shouted the girl, who sprang back from the man suddenly, glancing at Jade again. Suddenly, recognition flashed. “Shit!”  
“Hey—“ Jade began, but the girl’s stare caught the man’s attention.  
“She’s with Alpha!” The girl pointed at Jade, and while the man glowered at her, the girl snatched the bag from his hand. With a howl, the man gave chase, but the girl was quick, and gaining distance.

“Oh no you don’t,” he shouted, and before Jade could react, he slammed both of his open palms onto the pavement. With a horrible grinding rumble, the whole bridge quaked.

Jade stumbled onto her hands and knees as the ground beneath her cracked. People shouted and began to make a panicked scramble for the ends of the bridge as the structure continued to groan. The girl with the bag had stumbled, but was still running, jumping over cracks and weaving. The man gave chase, and so did Jade, until she saw the man move to put his palms on the ground again.

“No!” She shouted, and launched herself into the air, licks of green lightning already dancing across her fingertips. She brought her hands down upon his back, and his whole body seized like he had been tazed. Jade withdrew to avoid injuring him, satisfied as he gasped for air that he couldn’t quake the bridge again. However, he recovered far more quickly than most did, and whirled upon her, a punch missing her so narrowly that it grazed the top of her hair and knocked her headband off her head.

“You are the Alpha brat,” he confirmed, his fury evident. “You have no idea what my boss is gonna do to me because I lost that bag.”  
“Is it worse than what they’re going to do to you in prison?” Jade asked, flashing him a toothy smile. For reasons obvious, he didn’t seem to be in the mood for jokes, and snatched her upper arm. 

With a heave of strength she had been a fool not to anticipate, he flung her into the ground so hard that the wind was knocked out of her, and she wasn’t sure if she imagined the cracked concrete giving a little with the impact. Her vision danced with stars, and almost without her bidding, she felt the buzz of her lightning at her hands, ready to strike in defence. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the chance, because a heavy object clamped atop her forearms, pinning them so painfully to the ground she was sure her bones were going to snap. Above her loomed the man, and now that he had her pinned with his knees, he squeezed his hands around her neck.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as she fought to free herself. Though without the ability to touch him with her hands, she knew no way to zap him, and with his weight on top of her like two men, she had no hope of conjuring enough levitating force to lift herself off the ground. In desperation, she writhed and kicked, but the best she could do was cause annoyance by kneeing him in the back. And though she didn’t allow her efforts to diminish, she could barely see as her eyes watered, her lungs burned, and she was forced to conclude that perhaps she wouldn’t make it out of this one. 

All noise except her pounding heartbeat was drowned, so that it wasn’t until she was suddenly able to take in air that she realized someone had removed the man from atop her, sending him flying to the left with such force and speed that he nearly took her neck with him, tossing her onto her side. She barely caught herself before her nose smacked the pavement. Jade might have been more curious about this turn of events, except that she was racked with coughs as her throat tried to reconcile with being allowed to breathe again.

Curled onto her side with a hand planted on the cracked ground, she coughed and gagged, her breaths rattling horribly. Someone was trying to get her to stand, but all she felt she could do was gasp for air and blink away tears, clinging the forearm of her assistor with a grip like iron. It took her a few moments of choking on her own trachea to remember that the bridge was collapsing. Shakily, she pushed herself to her hands and knees, almost at this point wishing that the man had finished the job.

“Can you please finish spitting everywhere after we’re off the collapsing structure?” Asked a voice next to her, which sounded almost familiar, slightly annoyed, but mostly just urgent.  
“I—“ The snapped remark she had planned immediately caught in her throat and sent her into another fit of racking coughs. She reached up with her other hand and her aid grasped her other offered forearm, hauling her to her feet by her arms. Jade keeled forward, her stomach in a knot and threatening unload its contents.  
“Hold on, we have to get off this bridge,” he said, patting her on the back roughly.  
Jade shook her head. “Get yourself to safety, I will handle myself.” The sea breeze buffeted her so roughly that it tugged her ponytail, and she looked up to insist that he leave her.

But when she straightened, she was no longer on the bridge. She was standing by a crowd of onlookers on solid ground -- around 200 feet from where she must have been just moments ago. She could see the bench she had stood by, and a gnarled gap in the railing where her assailant must have been thrown through. Nobody was left on the bridge, though she was sure many couldn’t have gotten away so quickly on their own, especially not with the ground so deformed. And next to her, someone was panting heavily.

“Redshift??!?” She spat in shock, nearly choking on the exclamation, and flinching away from the hold he had around her shoulders. With a start, she realized he had used his flash-stepping ability to get herself – and probably others – off the bridge, and to kick the man causing the quakes through the railing. Jade had fought Redshift personally several times, as he was one of English’s street thugs. Aside from very brief conversations and one particular incident atop a moving truck, they hadn’t really met properly, and the very last thing she expected was for him to be saving citizens. To say his apparent rescue was the biggest surprise of the morning was a tremendous understatement.

“I’m hurt by your incredulity,” he deadpanned, rolling his shoulder experimentally. Strands of his hair clung to his forehead with sweat, and he hastily wiped a trickle of blood from his nose with the red hooded cape he wore over casual clothes – which was about all there was to his costume. Unless you counted the shades he used in lieu of a mask.  
“Did you ----“ Jade pointed vaguely to the people and the bridge, who were either finding their loved ones, or gawking in disbelief at either the bridge, or herself and Redshift.  
“Please, don’t thank me. I was only in the neighbourhood.” He nodded stoically. “It’s been a pleasure saving you, Greenie, but if you’ll excuse me—“

“Whoa, whoa, hang on,” Jade rasped, planting a hand on his chest to block his attempted exit. “You can’t just leave!”  
“Is this not America?” He gasped, clutching the neck of his cape in his best attempt at seeming appalled. “Did you want me to sign your water bottle? Gonna be honest, I didn’t pick you for a jogging kinda gal. I was so set on climbing for some reason? Not sure why, maybe it’s the flying thing. Wait no that’s stupid, why would you climb anything if you could just fly there?”  
Jade blinked, only processing half of his spiel. “Why would I run anywhere if I could just fly there? It’s called good cardio, have you heard of it?”  
“Nah, I don’t think I know what that is. I’ve probably been too busy doing laundry –“ Very suddenly, he lifted the edge of his shirt and gestured quite enthusiastically to his abdominal tone. “Do you get it? ‘Cause it’s a washboard. ‘Cause laundry. You do laundry on a--”  
“I didn’t need to see that. Nobody here needed to see that,” Jade lifted her gaze to the sky and threw her hands up.  
“I did,” called a man, from somewhere behind Jade.  
Redshift dropped his shirt and pointed into the crowd, to where the voice had come from. “ _Yes._ This guy gets it." He craned his neck to shout, "You are a gentleman and a scholar, sir.”

“This is serious! People could have gotten hurt if it wasn’t for you,” Jade interrupted, planting her hands on her hips. “You have potential outside of running errands for criminals! Surely you see that?” Jade rasped, her throat still raw. It wasn’t her best speech, sounding as though it had been delivered by a hyena rather than a person, but she had to do her best while she had him standing still and they weren’t actively fighting. “Why won’t you let yourself do the right thing? Alpha could use someone like you.”  
He regarded her without expression for a few moments, arms folded. “I haven’t had anyone yell at me for doing the right thing before. Or….. rasp like Steve Tyler, as the case may be.”  
“Sorry for not wanting to have to beat you up anymore,” Jade rolled her eyes. “How inconsiderate of me!”  
He raised his eyebrows, ever so slightly. “Hey, now. Let’s not take creative liberty with the facts here. You try to beat me up and I avoid it because I am simply too fast. I’m like…. Lightspeed. I’m like Sonic the Hedgehog. Or whichever one the Red Sonic is. I don’t watch children’s cartoons so I wouldn’t know.”  
Jade tried with every fibre of will in her body not to crack a smile. “I believe you,” she replied flatly, making it apparent in her tone that she did not. 

“It’s funny,” he said suddenly with an expression that was, as always, uncomfortably blank. And not because it was vacant or anything, but because it was completely unreadable. “Somebody told me I’d run into you today, and I did. It’s a Christmas miracle.”  
“It’s.... October???”  
“Semantics,” he waved his hand. “In any case, with that prophecy fulfilled and the situation handled, I have better places to be. You’re very good at your job, so I’m going to need an extra head-start on all the nefariousness and whatnot. You get it. Catch’a.”

Before she could even open her mouth to protest, he blinked out of her vision with a whisper of a breeze. At least he had danced around her attempts to persuade him to the side of justice, rather than trying to punch her through walls – which was often how these conversations went with people like him. 

Jade sucked one of her pointed teeth in annoyance before tugging her phone out of her pocket. Someone would have to call HQ about this, and it might as well be her.


	3. The Boss

A dripping wet, furious hulk of a man awaited Dave when he arrived at the safehouse quite a bit later than he was supposed to be. A pale man in a white suit, who oversaw this particular safehouse, stood around with several other people, all speaking in hushed tones. When Dave swung the door open, the conversation hushed.

“Well, don’t all of you say hello at once,” Dave muttered sarcastically, after a drawn out silence.  
“You—“ began the wet man, who had apparently dragged himself out of the river fast enough to beat Dave to the safehouse.  
“Hush, Quake,” said Doc, the man in the white suit. “Redshift, we have a situation. Please take a seat in my office.”  
Dave knew better than to accept anything from anyone around here. Even if it was a place to park one’s ass. “I’m good.”  
Doc looked annoyed, but didn’t comment. “Then we will do this here. Remember, I did offer.”

Before he could question this, the door behind him bashed against the wall, and heavy footsteps pounded in. The people who had been standing around Doc before suddenly skittered, fleeing to any room but the one they had been in. Dave knew who was behind him without turning, but that knowledge didn’t help him at all.

“Redshift. Never before have I had to have so many personal conversations with one of my men in such a short space of time. You’re not becoming more trouble than you’re worth, are you?” Growled a voice so gravelly that it made Green Flash’s choked rasps from earlier sound like birdsong. English.  
“What can I say? I’m a great conversationalist,” Dave responded, whirling casually, but very deliberately, to plant his back against the wall. “To what do I owe the visit?”

One of the men who had entered with English lashed out, planting a knife in the wall just inches from Dave’s head. His entire body tensed, and he felt as though he might splinter the wall for how hard he was leaning against it. 

“Keep that mouth of yours in check, or the next one goes up that pretty little nose of yours,” hissed he man, who then yanked his blade free. English stalked in, his massive frame seeming not to fit in the room, and took a seat that Doc offered him.

“Quake has delivered an alarming report,” English said slowly. “He was running me an errand this morning. Not a little one. A big one. Two million dollars big. And this errand was running smoothly, until a girl from Condesce’s crew snatched it away. Didn’t she, Quake?”  
Quake, who had been all rage when Dave had entered, looked more like a mouse now. “Yes, sir. But---“  
“And you might wonder how such a tiny child might wrestle a bag with two million dollars in it away from a man such as Quake. Did you wonder that?” He turned his gaze lazily to Dave, and it felt as though he wasn’t wearing shades at all. As though English could see into his soul.  
“Yes, sir,” Dave answered tensely, actively forcing himself not to clench his fists.  
“Well Quake here tells me that something distracted him. What distracted you, Quake?” English turned that same soul-skewering stare to Quake.  
“The…” he cleared his throat, wiping his brow. “Green Flash did, sir.”

“Green Flash did,” English repeated, leaning back in his chair. The room was so quiet, Dave could hear the satin of the lounge rub as the man moved. “He saw a puppy, and he lost my two million dollars. Was it a cute puppy?”  
If Quake hadn’t already been wet, the sweat would have gotten him there anyway. Right now, he was paler than Doc. “S-sir, i—“  
“Did she do any tricks, Quake? Did she fetch? Did she play dead?”  
“I…. I had her pinned, but…” Quake’s eyes slide to Dave, then back to English.  
“Your first mistake was allowing that little girl to run away with my bag, Quake,” English announced, crossing his knees. “Now money isn’t hard to come by for a man like me. It’s just slow to come by. I put in months of work, culminating to the acquisition of that two million dollars. I like to be paid for my work. So how do you think I feel about a man who lost my paycheck because a little girl pointed at a doggie and ran?”

Quake’s knuckles were white on the arms of his chair. Dave was silently freaking out. Doc was offering around snacks. “Not very well, sir,” Quake managed.  
“No. Not very well. Now what was your second mistake?” When Quake didn’t respond, English smiled coldly. “Your second mistake was going after Green Flash instead of the girl with my TWO MILLION DOLLARS.” He sprang from his seat, stalking over to Quake until he loomed over the man, making him look like a child in comparison. “You tried to choke this season’s darling of the Sburbian tabloids, a member of Alpha who is recognisable on the street, in broad daylight. What kind of attention do you think that brings to us?”  
“Bad attention, sir!” Quake blurted, pressed so far back into his seat that his head was nearly on the back rest.  
“Correct,” English replied calmly, before standing and turning to face the two men he’d come in with. “And what was your third mistake?”  
Quake blinked, his brow furrowed. Several long moments passed. “S-sir? If I made a third mistake…. I’m not sure… what I mean to say is, I’m not clear—“

It happened so fast that Dave didn’t realize what had happened for several seconds. English made an almost imperceptible motion with his fingers, and the man to his right lifted a silenced pistol and landed a bullet between Quake’s eyes.

It took all of his willpower not to vomit on the floor then and there. Quake’s head was snapped back, blood trailing from the hole in his skull. Dave stayed as silent as possible, but English didn’t forget he was there. English never forgot anything.

“And Redshift. I’d almost be tempted to call your rescue of the Alpha brat a mistake, except that you’ve handed us a wonderful opportunity. I saw the most interesting thing on my feed on the car ride over here,” he pulled a phone out of his pocket and tapped it a few times. For almost a minute he scrolled, occasionally chuckling slightly at something, to the point where Dave almost asked if the conversation was over. But then he showed Dave the screen, and Dave nearly took the gun and shot himself.

Someone in the crowd had taken a photo right when he’d lifted his shirt. Green Flash looked more like Pink Flash, and it was before she’d averted her eyes. The lack of context painted an extremely unfortunate picture, which tabloids had eaten right up, and had probably bought the image off the photographer before Dave had even left the scene. Now Dave’s boss had seen it. 

“That’s not what it—“ Dave stopped himself, because nobody would believe or care whether or not it was what it looked like. “Sorry, what opportunity might this bring us, exactly?”  
“That dog girl is a rising name in Alpha and in Sburb. She’s got pep, pluck, and big puppy dog eyes. She’s fresh meat, journalistically speaking, so people want to hear the dirt on her. She has no secret identity due to her… condition, so she can never hide for long. And a little birdie told me that a very rich granddaddy left her a trust fund big enough to buy a whole island. It’s under the supervision of a particular Alpha founder, until she gains full access when she turns twenty-one. So what does this give us?” When Dave looked lost, English smirked, stepped back, and began to pace the room like they weren’t in the company of a dead body. “It gives us a young, rising public figure, a trust fund that a member of the city’s self-appointed government body has responsible access to for another two years, and a strapping young lad who has a foot in the door with the woman herself.” English grinned. 

Dave blinked, extremely uneasy but not sure why. “And how does this benefit us?”  
“Do try and use your head for something other than decoration,” English grunted. “You, boy, are going to buddy up with Miss Harley, gain her trust, and get her to a position where we may capture her for ransom. That pretty face of yours is going to win us back our two million, and then some.”  
If the gunshot had been sickening, this wasn’t helping. Panic began to creep its way into his gut. “Why can’t you just…. I don’t know, ambush her on the street?”  
“Her only concrete schedule is on patrol, when she is with other inhumans and on alert. We need her unawares until the last minute, or else that pesky lightning could cause us problems.” 

English gestured to his men, and they stood, each taking one of Quake’s arms and dragging him toward the cellar. “Doc, I need you to gather me all the info on our target and forward it all. Redshift,” he turned back to Dave, and eyebrow raised. “I trust you understand what’s at stake here?”  
He hadn’t been talking about the money. Dave remembered the black sedan with tinted window that was always parked outside their building, and nodded slowly, sickness threatening to overwhelm him. “Yes.”  
“Good. There is no time like the present, then.” He gestured to the door.

Dave tried not to look to eager to leave as he made for the door. As soon as he got back to the street he gasped for air, bracing himself against a wall as he composed himself. Perhaps Rose hadn’t meant the bridge incident when she spoke that morning of Green Flash, but something worse still. Dave wrestled with the sinking feeling that he was careening on a track that was going to get an innocent girl hurt, while that black sedan would ensure he didn’t try to jump off. Which meant he had no choice but to make his way downtown and start looking for an over-zealous hero with more hair than street sense.


	4. An Unexpected Turn Of Events

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for any mistakes, I am extremely tired finishing this up for posting tonight, and may edit it in the morning when i'm conscious enough to re-read it critically/add important dialogue. Thanks for reading thus far, and for all your kudos! <3

Nobody told Jade how much of a bummer hero work could be. It wasn’t just rescuing babies and busting up bad guys. Around Sburb, a hero was essentially an underpaid police officer. And it was days like this one that really reminded her of that.

“We are just waiting on the cleaners and then we’re all wrapped up here,” Ghost informed gently. Jade liked her, but her power meant that patrols with her were usually the sad kind. Ghost could sense death, and while assisting in clean-ups was undoubtedly helpful, it was emotionally draining. Today it had been a multi-vehicle crash.

“Great. I’m ready to be out of here,” Jade replied with a half-hearted smile.  
“Are you sure you’re well?” Ghost asked suddenly, her head tilting and her gaze unwavering. “Do your injuries still bother you?”  
So even Ghost had heard of what happened on the bridge two days ago. Not especially surprising, but Jade had naively hoped to have heard the end of it by now. “The bruises will heal.”  
“Then it is something else that bothers you?” Ghost sat down next to Jade on the curb.   
“Oh, it bothers me alright,” Jade smirked. “But it’s not important. Just another drop in the ocean, so to speak.”  
“That was somewhat profound – at least, for this early in the morning.”

Jade’s wrist began to buzz, making her jump. Ghost’s identical watch was doing the same, but she reacted calmly, as she did with everything. There was a level three threat in the CBD that required the attention of all capable nearby units.

“Level three is above my ability,” Ghost commented without emotion.   
“You don’t want to come with me?” Jade stood, straightening her costume, which was an almost entirely grey jump suit, save for her green atom symbol in the middle of her chest. About her shoulders she wore a two-tailed hood with holes cut for her ears. Each sleeve ended seamlessly in a two-fingered glove, and a pair of bright green trainers met where the suit ended at her ankles. Since her physical mutation shot any possibility of a secret identity in the face, she didn’t bother with any kind of disguise other than the round frames she wore for necessity – secured to her head with a harness.   
Ghost shook her head with a whisp of a smile. “You have your strengths, and I have mine,” she sighed, turning to the crash scene.   
“If it counts for anything, I think you’re better at doing this than I am at beating people up,” Jade patted her on the shoulder.   
“Probably because you keep trying to make friends with the people you’re fighting with.” Ghost patted Jade’s hand and raised her eyebrows.   
“Probably,” Jade shrugged and stepped back before letting her feet lift off the ground. “I’ll catch you back at HQ?”  
“Yes. Be careful. Don’t make too many friends,” Ghost called, as Jade swooped away and gained altitude.

Her watch was showing a GPS route to the problem location. It wasn’t quite adapted for someone who was travelling as the crow flies, but all she had to do was beeline for the end marker and it worked well enough. Though within eight blocks of the problem area, she didn’t even need the GPS anymore; the commotion was loud enough.

Highly pressurised water was fountaining all down March Avenue. Every fire hydrant was burst, and almost every window was shattered. A soaked man ran past Jade as she touched down on the slick stone sidewalk, his arms full of what had been the Gucci window display. However, she had bigger fish to fry. And what complicated fish they were.

A massive mechanical spider was planted in the middle of the street, its front legs flared up in a threat display. Despite the dire situation, Jade couldn’t help but notice how redundant such a display would be for a spider that wasn’t actually real. Regardless, it was doing it -- at Redshift, for that matter.

His hand, which was just peeking into view past his cape from Jade’s angle, was glossy with blood. His hood was knocked back and his pale hair was slick with water. He looked exhausted, and for whatever reason, he was fighting with a giant robot spider.

The spider reeled back slightly, and he tensed. Just as it let forth a shattering scream, he flashed out of its way to avoid the force of the sound, which cracked the road where he has been standing. Jade had to cover her ears, the sound completely unbearable. By the time she recovered, the spider was going for Redshift again.

“Give it up, little boy. English isn’t going to just let you go without consequence,” called a tinny voice from the spider. “If you hold still, I’ll only break your legs instead of shattering them!”  
“Hey!” Jade cried, jogging up to confront the pair. “What do you think you’re doing?”  
“Ugh. Freaking Alpha killjoys,” groaned the spider.  
“Situation is under control, Greenie, please go back to handing out parking tickets,” called Redshift.  
“You guys have nicknames now?” cooed the spider, mockingly. “That’s so cute!” with emphasis to her statement, the spider flung a limb and knocked Redshift into a light post, bending it with the impact. 

“We do not---“ Jade clamped her mouth shut, deciding that this was an argument she wouldn’t humour. “I don’t know what sort of disagreement you are having with this bug, Redshift, but I’m finishing this right now.”  
“Are ya?” Asked the spider. “Because all you’ve done since you got here is like, gawk and do nothing.”  
“Wh---“ Jade felt her face heat up. “Well you’re a bully and a bad monologuer.”  
“Zing,” Redshift groaned, struggling to his feat. Now that she was paying attention, he looked a lot worse than she realized. After a moment’s hesitation, she approached him – keeping her distance, of course, but close enough that she could intervene the if the robotic assailant swung again. “Also your spider looks like a happy meal toy from 2003,” Redshift added.  
“What are you doing, that’s obviously a compliment,” Jade whispered harshly. 

“Enough! You won’t lie down and die, so we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” roared the spider, and it reared again. The pincers near its mouth opened, and Jade spotted within its maw the honeycomb pattern of the caging around a speaker. Just in time, she clapped her hands over her ears and dove. Redshift flash stepped away, swaying dizzily upon landing several feet away.

“You don’t look so good!” Jade cried out as she sound died. “Why is she attacking you?”  
“I made our boss mad ‘cause I quit,” Redshift smirked slightly. “’Course anything makes him mad. He once shot a guy for putting white sugar in his coffee instead of raw.”  
“Oh, yeah. Tony,” recalled the spider as it turned toward them. “Rough day for his wife, I tell ‘ya.”  
Jade glanced between them. “Are you two fighting or is this—“  
“We’re fighting. Dodge!” Redshift jumped back and so did Jade as the spider swiped again, its sharp leg barely missing her.

“You quit!?” Jade gaped at him, keeping one eye on the spider. “Wh—“ she dodged into a roll as the spider swiped at her. “Why!?”  
“Well, Greenie, t’was one stormy afternoon in August. I remember the day well. The wind chill was particularly fierce as I stood on the balcony of my fine estate, and an apparition of the Lord Zeus speared before me. He said unto me—“  
“Oh my god be quiet!” Growled the spider, grazing his leg as she stomped at him. Jade noticed that he was no longer using his flashstep. “Do you ever shut the fuck up? Like, at all? Ugh, so glad you’re leaving.”

Jade tried not to get too excited about potentially having gotten through to someone about joining Alpha. At the present moment, they were facing a hunk of metal and Redshift was injured, now bleeding from several places. If they didn’t take it down soon, things wouldn’t be pretty. 

Jade was pretty resilient, but while she could take a hit, she couldn’t really deal one so well – not with her fists, anyway. But her electricity was another story. A big hunk of metal like that would have to buzz nicely. Jade’s hands sparked to life with a green glowing energy and she lunged at the spider, reaching for a foreleg. The spider flinched away and Jade’s swipe fell short, leaving her open for the spider to fling her across the street and through a YSL window. 

Jade extracted herself from a display mannequin and groaned, her skin stinging from all the cuts she’d acquired from that trip through the window. Obviously that spider wasn’t going to let Jade’s electricity anywhere near itself. In order for her lightning to affect it, she’d either have to get close… or touch something that would conduct to its body. She drifted through the air and back onto the street, careful to avoid the jagged glass, and scanned the street while Redshift slithered his way around the Spider’s attacks.

The hydrants were still raining water upon the street. Touching down, Jade peered at her feet, following a small but workable stream of water on its path down the gutter. It was then that Jade realized her plan of attack. 

She ran over to Redshift and pulled him away by his hood as a spider leg tipped with scissors slashed toward him. “Listen to me,” she hissed, scrambling away from another swipe. “When I signal, I want you to use your flashstep to jump as high as you can in the air.”  
“Okay. Fine. Cool. Fine. I have major concerns,” he grunted, skirting the spider and forcing it to shuffle to follow his movements.   
“And those would be?” Jade asked, swiping at the spider with her charged hand to fend it off.   
“One, I’m like, about to pass out. You have no idea how long I was dancing around this scrap heap before you got here.” Redshift grabbed her arm and the wind buffeted her as he stepped them back a good twenty feet. Her head spun as he continued, “Also, I can jump just fine, but the landing will still break my ankles.”  
“Well, you’re going to have to do it. I don’t see any other weapons in our arsenal and she’s actively avoiding my hands. I think I can zap her through the water if I put enough charge in, but you can’t be touching the ground or you’ll be electrocuted.”  
“Electrocuted, broken ankles… can’t decide which sounds more fun,” he deadpanned.  
“Come on! If she keeps screaming she’s going to burst my eardrums. These things are sensitive you know,” Jade huffed. “Look. I’ll catch you.”  
“You’ll catch me.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes!” Jade dodged as two legs came down on her, nearly spearing her through. “Run up the wall to our left, jump off, and I’ll catch you.”  
“You’re going to miss and I’ll die. I can see it now. In memoriam: he died how he lived – backflips.”  
“You won’t die if you jump high enough!” Jade groaned. “I don’t see you lasting much longer anyway, so you might as well trust me.”

He scrambled to avoid having his throat slashed and rolled under a spider leg to end up next to Jade. “Fine,” he spat. “But I don’t have much juice left so this is your only shot.”  
“Trust me,” Jade insisted, then backed up so she stood over the gutter. “On my call, you run and jump. I promise I will catch you.”  
“Right,” he nodded. 

The spider came toward them with its fore legs lashing. Stopping before them, Jade saw its mouth open again, its feet resting in the flowing water. “Now!” she cried, and saw Redshift flash out of her peripheral vision as she rolled to her right, crouched, and planted her hands in the gutter, unleashing a torrent of electricity so strong it stung her whole body.

The street lights around them flared and popped. The spider shuddered and quaked, its limbs jerking. The speaker in its mouth made a loud pop and its eight red eyes flickered before dying as the robot began to topple. Jade didn’t stop to watch it fall. Instead she ran forward two steps and leapt into the sky, tackling Redshift midair and using all her strength to hold him in the air, clinging around his waist and battling against both gravity and the force of his fall trajectory. They sailed dangerously close to the ground before their path stopped, and Jade was able to levitate them gently to the pavement again. 

“I will not vomit,” Redshift groaned as she let him stand on his own, panting.   
“Is that a declaration or a prayer?” Jade asked, walking over to the twitching robot spider. She began to search it with her hands for an opening.   
“She’s not in there. She pilots these things herself from the comfort of her home,” he informed her weakly. Jade took his word for it and pressed a few buttons on her watch, sending a medical assist request to Alpha. 

“I’ve called an ambulance. Just hang in there,” Jade instructed, trying to keep a respectful distance.   
“It feels like my brain is going to slide out of my nose,” he informed her, taking a seat on the gutter and holding his head in his hands.   
“Is that…. Normal?”  
“When I slow time? Yes. Takes a lot of brain power, as it turns out.”  
“Whoa,” Jade blinked. “You slow time?”  
He raised his head to look at her, his shades slightly askew. “I’m curious as to what you think I’ve been doing this whole time.”  
“I don’t know…. Just teleporting or running really fast?” Jade shrugged. “I didn’t really have much time to think about the finer details when you were trying to fling me off the roof of a moving vehicle.”  
“I don’t ‘run really fast’, I just move at a normal pace and bend time around me so that my speed relative to the passage of time around me is super fast. But I can’t stop time completely, and I can’t do it for more than a few real-life seconds at a time. I wouldn’t be able to make it from here to the end of the street in one trip,” he pointed to the intersection at the corner of March Avenue and Fountain Parade.  
“That’s…. really cool. Aside from the brains falling out thing, of course,” Jade sat down on the gutter too, keeping a good distance. “About English…”

He tensed next to her, as if waiting to see what she said. “It was really brave of you to leave,” she sighed. “I meant it when I said we could use you. It might be a little soon but I do hope you’ll consider. We’re short-staffed enough as it is…”  
“Right. And I suppose my mile long track record of petty crime won’t get in the way at all,” he replied dryly.   
Jade clicked her tongue. “I suppose that’s a no, then.”

They sat in silence for nearly a full minute before Redshift replied. “It’s not a no,” he sighed. Jade looked up and tried not to grin. “Don’t get too excited, I didn’t say I was joining the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse either. Seems like a whole lot of work and not a lot of reward.”  
“The work kind of…. Is the reward. You know?”  
“Not really, no.”  
Jade drummed her fingernails on her leg. “It’s like, we have all this… stuff. Powers, you know. And you could be holed up in an office somewhere pretending they don’t exist but that’s not really living. Not like this is.”  
“No offence to all the office workers we’re just casually insulting while sitting drenched in a gutter,” he reminded her cooly. He didn’t look like he would vomit anymore, but he was still pale and bleeding. “What would you be doing if you didn’t have superpowers?”  
“Enjoying being able to wash my hair without earplugs. Water just pours right in, I tell ya,” she grinned.   
“I meant career-wise. Though that is a concept that I had never considered up until now. Do you --“ he stopped midsentence and swayed slightly. Jade stood up, her brow furrowed, and took a step toward him.

“Are you okay?” she crouched down in front of him and waved a hand in front of his face. With his shades in the way, she couldn’t see if he was conscious.   
“I meant career-wise. Though that—“ Redshift jerked suddenly. “Oh shit, the blood loss is worse than I thought.”  
“I think so. How bad is that cut on your arm?” Jade asked, holding out a hand to see. But he shoved it further under his cape.  
“It’s fine,” he insisted. “The ambulances can’t be far, right? Do you think if I play dead they’ll use the defibrillator?”  
“I don’t… ugh. Nevermind.” Jade frowned at him. “You know, If I didn’t have firsthand accounts suggesting the contrary, I would have severely doubted you were a real criminal to begin with.”  
“Have you met me? I use the same knife for butter and jam,” he boasted, smirking ever so slightly.  
Jade gasped. “Monster.”  
“It’s true.”  
“And technically no, I have not met you,” Jade reminded him. “Fighting doesn’t count.” 

Her ears twitched as they caught the sound of a siren approaching. “They’re nearly here,” she confirmed. “Can you stand?”  
“Inadvisable if you like your shoes to not be puked on,” he grunted.   
“Hang in there,” she patted him gently on the shoulder and stood up, ready to fill in the EMTs. It took her a second to notice his hand extended upwards.

“I thought you said you couldn’t stand?” She raised an eyebrow and stared at his calloused hand with uncertaintly.  
“No, genius, it’s called a handshake in many cultures,” he scoffed as her. “We haven’t met, so I’m introducing myself. You may call me Groovemaster.”  
Jade started and grasped his hand, shaking it quickly. “Jade Harley. I’m not calling you that.”  
“Well yeah, it’d be dumb to call me Jade Harley when I’m clearly Groovemaster,” he grinned, very briefly, before letting the expression fall.  
“Very funny. I do need to call you something, though,” Jade tapped her chin with her hand, now that it was free of the handshake.   
“Groovemaster.”  
“Shifty?”  
“Groovemaster though.”  
“You’re right, Shifty is terrible. Oh!”  
“Have you considered Groovemaster?”  
Jade clapped and leaned forward with a grin. “Red?”  
“I am still 100% in love with Groovemaster but…” he sighed ever so slightly. “Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

Jade clapped her hands with a smile as the ambulance arrived. “Red it is,” she announced proudly. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”  
“Uh. Sure. Not the word I would use, this entire exercise has been a disaster.”

The EMTs checked Red, sitting him in the back of the Ambulance while they assessed the damage. As they finished up with their temporary bandaging, one came over to check Jade’s glass cuts and recommend her a disinfectant. Finally, they were preparing to take Red to the hospital, and Jade ducked over to see him off.

“Stitches?” she asked, her arms folded.  
“Almost certainly. Wish me luck, put in a good word for me to whoever’s job it is to have me thrown in jail, ok?” he saluted with his good arm as the EMT swung the doors shut.  
“Ok!” Jade called after him, chortling. "Good luck, Red!"

Jade watched the ambulance go before turning to the street. The whole place was a disaster, and she just knew HQ were going to love the mess. But duty was duty, so she raised her watch and made the call, preparing for what would likely be a very long and difficult cleanup.


	5. Complications

It was nearly a week until Dave saw Jade Harley again, even with his own efforts to have other things to do. He left the hospital the moment they gave the ok, slunk back to his apartment, and had to come up with a very good story for his sister, who subsequently banished him to long-sleeved shirts only until his wound healed. Kanaya remained in the dark – a subject they had regular arguments about, but Rose was adamant that Kanaya was safer if she knew nothing. Especially while Dave was in a gang.

Somehow, it always looped back to him feeling guilty. Not that he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about at the moment.

In fact, he had been spending a peaceful evening mixing tunes on his ancient laptop, drinking an unhealthy amount of apple juice, and feeling sorry for himself, when he got a text from a number he didn’t have saved. It included a picture of his bedroom window from the street, and it was at that moment that he realized English wouldn’t forget about the objective.

But he couldn’t join Alpha either. He’d already been burned once, and as far as he was concerned, Alpha sounded like just another gang with a pretty pink bow on top. The last thing he needed is someone else digging into his private life and making demands. No, he had to dig himself out of the first hole before he started making new ones.

The issue remained that he had to maintain contact with Harley if he wanted to keep bullets away from his family members. But if he maintained contact with Harley, she would get kidnapped. But if he didn’t, the man texting creep pics would start popping skulls. He tried not to dwell on it because it sent him into a somewhat not-chill panic. 

The best he could do was to power forward and hope that his conscience didn’t get in the way of not getting Rose and her girlfriend killed. So he did some digging, and while he couldn’t find a way to contact Harley, he knew she lived at the Alpha tower. Not that he could just waltz in there. He could hang around it and wait, but that was creepy and super lame. However, they were always holding stupid fundraisers and functions. All he had to do was rock up to one of those and hope she turned up. Solid.

So that was more or less how he ended up awkwardly loitering outside the Rivers Hotel in a tux and cape, watching people arrive. It was hard to believe people without ulterior motives actually left the house for these things. And yet, here they all were. 

He recognized some. Bigger names were easy, like Marina and the White Queen. Some were vaguely familiar – probably people he’d fought before. He kept well out of the way of traffic to avoid any confrontations, just in case. Fashionably late, Jade showed up in a car with a taller dark-haired girl, wearing a dark red mark to match her dress. As they joined the line, Dave quietly and casually walked up to join them. With the crowd, they didn’t notice right away, and he caught the tail end of their conversation.

“I just feel bad,” said the unfamiliar young lady, picking at the bell sleeves of her dark red gown. “It’s such short notice.”  
“You can’t help it if your florist cancelled two weeks beforehand,” Jade replied softly, patting her hand. “I just hope I can do half as good a job.”  
“I’m sure you’ll be amazing. I trust you,” smiled the tall girl. “Roses are overdone anyway,” she waved her hand, and Jade grinned, flashing her pointed canines. 

“Fight any spiders lately?” Dave cut in, trying not to eavesdrop too much longer. Jade and her friend whirled, and the former’s jaw dropped.  
“What are you doing here!?” she blurted. “And more importantly, thank you for letting me know you survived,” she frowned at him, folding her arms.  
“Yeah I would have, but my carrier pigeon is on maternity leave,” Dave shrugged, then held out his hand to the taller girl. “Groovemaster. Nice to meet you.”  
“Your name is not—“ Jade stopped and turned to her friend. “His name is not Groovemaster. It’s Redshift. Red, this is my friend Ghost.”  
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Ghost raised an eyebrow of judgement as she shook his hand gently, a cold ring stinging his hand faintly.  
“Surely good things,” Dave replied flatly. 

Jade stepped back to include him in the line and leaned forward, as if to conspire. “So? Have you thought about it?”  
Dave swallowed. It felt kinda shitty to shoot her down outright but he was absolutely set on not getting tied up in even more webs than he already was. “I don’t know. I’m thinking about launching my solo career.”  
“A solo career,” Jade raised her eyebrows.  
He shrugged and held up his hands. “Worked out alright for Queen Bey.”  
“He’s not wrong,” Ghost said over her shoulder as she flashed the doorman a ticket.

“I actually forgot that I wasn’t invited to this event. Whoops,” Dave raised an eyebrow at the doorman.  
“It’s fine,” Jade waved a hand flippantly as she climbed the steps to the door. “It’s a buffet. They can spare a seat.”  
“Er—“  
“Hi!” she greeted the doorman with a wide smile, and he watched her briefly converse in her bubbly way. From some sort of pocket in her greyish-blue dress, she pulled out a ticket. After a brief exchange, she turned to him and beckoned him up the stairs.

Well, he wasn’t going to say no to a free meal.

They were seated near the wall, and Dave felt more or less… completely fucking awkward. It reminded him of high school, being invited to a party where he knew one person and they were talking to everyone else the whole night. It seemed every second person wanted to speak with Jade between speeches (all boring, by the way.) However he did find an unexpected ally in Ghost. As it turned out, she was a minor inhuman who could sense death. She was getting married in a fortnight, and since the florist she had hired pulled out of the deal, Jade was covering it. Fun fact: she was something of a hobbyist when it came to botany.

“Can I ask something?” Dave leaned back in his seat after he’d finished his second plate shamelessly.  
“You just did,” Ghost smiled. “Go ahead.”  
“You just like, told me everything about your life. Aren’t you slightly concerned about your identity being found out?” It was incomprehensible to him, especially since his real identity got outed to a dangerous man who was using it to blackmail him.  
“Not really…. No.” She looked over at Jade, who was two tables over chatting enthusiastically to a young man in glasses. “I’m not really a big player, so to speak. I don’t think anyone would care much even if I was open with it. But also…” she pointed to Jade. “I think that being open with it isn’t so bad.”  
“But she can’t hide. She never escapes this. There are people who would want her dead for what she does,” Dave pointed out, following her gaze.  
“Maybe, but I think there’s something to be said for being personally accountable for the good things you do. Not having to hide your hard work. Nothing bad has happened to her yet, and I think she’s a great role model for people like us. To be ourselves a little more, you know?” Ghost smiled softly, calmly. A cold hand gripped Dave’s lungs and squeezed. Nothing bad had happened to Jade yet, but it was about to. And with every passing minute, his situation got all the more impossible. 

“I personally like the mask,” he sighed, trying not to look freaked out. He picked up his fork and started picking at a lemon slice with it. “Thinks aren’t so idealistic in my neck of the woods. People have all sorts of ways to get to the truth, and once they get it, they’ll use it to crush you into the dirt and make you say thank you.”  
Ghost didn’t reply for a moment. “Well jeez, I hope you’re not speaking from experience,” she laughed nervously.  
Dave shrugged quickly. “I was in the mob. You see all kinds of shit.” She looked uncomfortable, so he quickly added “But you’re in the closest thing to a nice neighbourhood Sburb has, and you have Alpha behind you. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing for you to worry about. Besides, I think I’ve made myself enough of a public enemy that English has more or less forgotten Alpha exists.” Totally a lie, but it sounded good enough.

“Jade’s right, you know. We could protect you,” Ghost said gently. “I know she’s an idealist and a half, but she’s telling the truth.”  
“I don’t doubt it. But she doesn’t know half of it,” Dave scoffed. “She’s trying to save a sinking boat with a soda cap.”  
“Well, I don’t know much about you either, but can I give you some advice?” Ghost rested her chin on her hands. “If someone wants to help you, they can only scoop that water with whatever you give them. She uses a soda cap because that’s all you give her to work with. And I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that there’s a few people in your life with soda caps instead of buckets.”

“Aaand you two,” Jade sing-songed, “buddying up over here. What are we talking about?” She leaned over the back of their chairs.  
“Wedding planning,” Ghost lied quickly. “I was telling him about the cake.”  
“Oh gosh, please don’t mention cake. I’ve eaten far too much to think about dessert, even if it’s delicious vanilla raspberry,” Jade groaned, sliding back into her seat. Her shoes clacked under the table as she kicked them off. 

“Yeah. Cake. Raspberry,” Dave covered lamely. “Ghost mentioned you’re a florist. I wouldn’t have picked it.”  
“Maybe you’re just a bad judge of character. Mountain climbing?” Jade raised an eyebrow and leaned forward.  
“When are we going to let that go?” Dave sighed. “I bet you couldn’t pick my hobbies within a ten mile radius.”  
“Does laundry count?” Jade chortled.  
“Laundry does not count.”

She leaned back and regarded him with a scrutinizing gaze that made him suddenly nervous. Finally, she grinned. “You have a soundcloud.”  
“What. No.” His reply was too fast and too defensive. “Maybe. I’m not giving you the link so don’t ask,” he asserted.  
“I knew it! People who wear shades inside are pretty much always criminals or musicians, you know,” she giggled.  
“I gotta ask. Wouldn’t criminal have been your first guess out of the two?” Dave raised a brow, pointing his fork at her. “You know, since we met while you were trying to stop me from transporting sums of dubious ownership.”  
“Stolen, you mean.”  
“I feel,” Ghost interrupted, “That there is a lot of this I’m not understanding, especially for a conversation between two people who’ve known each other officially for less than two weeks.”  
“Well according to the tabloids we’re set for a spring wedding,” Jade cackled. “Thanks, by the way. This is what happens when you start flashing people in public. You have no idea how many people I’ve had to explain that situation to!” She complained, throwing her hands up.

Dave pressed his mouth shut. The last time he’d seen that picture, he’d been in a room trying to pretend there wasn’t a fresh dead body three feet away from him. And again, there came the guilt. He shouldn’t be having fun. He shouldn’t even be in the country. And yet he couldn’t leave. Briefly, he considered just sticking his lemony fork into his eye and solving all his problems in one fell swoop, but that might not even save Rose. Only one thing could – and for how long? When would English next ask him to do something awful in the name of keeping his sister alive? It wouldn’t stop with Jade. And as he watched her giggling toothily at something Ghost said, it was hard to reconcile that it would start with her either.

“I have to go,” he suddenly blurted, feeling as thought the room was closing in upon him. “I wasn’t supposed to stick around so long, actually. I only meant to check in so you didn’t think I was dead.”  
Jade blinked, wide-eyed. “Oh. Well, uh…” she stammered. “Better late than never?”  
“Right. Great to meet you Ghost, congrats on tying the knot,” he flicked her finger guns – a questionable move that he instantly regretted, but it was too late now. “I’ll see you around.”  
“Wait—“

He flashstepped to the door and slipped through, pushing it a bit to get there without having to walk at all in real time. Once outside in the cold air, he ducked around a corner and allowed himself a moment to get his breathing sorted out. The further he dug himself into his hole, the worse his anxiousness got. There was no way. But he had to. But it was impossible. This wasn’t something he was emotionally equipped to do. English was expecting results, and a meetup. He wouldn’t accept excuses. And it would have helped if she wasn’t so…. Like that. There was nothing really reproachable to cling to. Dave leaned against the brick and let his head fall against it, sighing. “Why can’t you be a bad person?”

“Huh?” His eyes snapped open, and he saw the silhouette of a puffy skirt in the mouth of the alley he stood in. Jade had followed him outside, and was clinging nervously to the hem of her skirt.  
“Nothing, uh –“ quickly, he slowed time to fetch his phone out of his pocket. “I said uh, why are you a bad person. My sister wouldn’t pick up.”  
“You have a sister?” Jade asked quickly, clapping her hands together. “Oh that’s so cool. I have a few cousins but, I only really grew up—“ she stopped herself. “Never…. Nevermind. I shouldn’t babble. I came to say, I know you don’t want to join Alpha, and whatever your reasons are, they’re probably good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help you.” Oh no. “So, if you’re ever in trouble,” she fished into her dress’ pocket and produced a piece of paper, and he silently begged her to lose it in the wind. “Call. I mean it. You’re not alone.”

Dave took it and held it like it was diseased. If he took this, he’d have a way to contact her. Which meant he was several steps toward completing his task. Sensing his hesitation, she deflated. “Or um, give it to your sister or whatever, you know, if she gets in trouble – I mean, if you’re worried—“ Jade cleared her throat.  
“Thank you,” he blurted, unable to think of anything else to say. If it weren’t so horrifying that she was inadvertently assisting her own demise, he might have been touched by the gesture. “I mean it. Uh. I’ll pass it on. To her.”  
“Right.”  
“And I might…” he cleared his throat while his internal voice screamed obscenities at him. “Well, I’ll text you my number just in case. There might be a… birthday party and the DJ cancels or whatever, I’m not too bad myself you know, they call me the Calvin Harris of shady urban neighborhoods,” he attempted something of a smirk but he had a feeling it didn’t work. However, she took it and laughed, sounding far too light and carefree for someone standing in an alleyway being unknowingly tricked by a shady mobster.  
“Likewise, if you need lightning or a home-grown pumpkin,” she grinned. “I’d better get inside. It’s freezing out here,” she sighed. “See you around?”  
“I hope so,” he lied. He really hoped she suddenly took a year long trip to Europe and didn’t come back until this whole thing had blown over. But that would be too good to be true.  
“Me too.” Her smile was visible even in the low light, as she backed away toward the building. “And thanks for checking in. I was starting to get worried.”

Unable to respond to that without vomiting or spilling the whole thing, he flashstepped away five times in succession, not stopping until he was far away, hidden safely in another alley to bang his head against a wall and mop up the blood dripping from his nose.


	6. The Atrium

“BOO!”

Jade shrieked, nearly flinging the ceramic pot she was cleaning across the room. Whirling around with her best frown, she pointed a finger at her cousin. “John! Why do you always have to scare me?”  
“So that way if you ever meet me and I _don’t_ scare you, you know that I’ve been mind controlled, or I have an evil doppelganger.” John planted himself on the top step to the atrium, his dark hair as messy as always.  
“Nobody is going to mind control you, John!” Jade turned away to hide her smile. “And if they did, I don’t think they’d send you after me. What could anyone possibly want with me? Other than a reasonable range of plants and flowers.”  
“More than reasonable. You’ve been busy up here, we’ve barely seen you for a week,” he leaned his face against the railing so heavily that it pulled at his face, distorting his expression.  
“I’ve been…. Around…” Jade trailed off, realising he was right. On the top floor of the Alpha building was an atrium. Once, I had been home to a founding member whose powers were based with plants. She died years ago, though, and the place had been more or less abandoned until Jade asked to use it. She hoped she would be a more permanent occupant.

“Check it out,” John called, and she turned to see him holding a pumpkin in front of his head. “This thing is huge!”  
“I know! I grew it!” She was a little bit proud of her progress, and couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride. “You should put it down before you break the stem though,” she advised.

“So, dad asked me to pass this on,” John told her, approaching to hand her a letter. It had been opened, and was addressed to Alpha itself, but when she slid the letter from the envelope, it addressed ‘Dear Miss J Harley,’ and the header for a local news network was at the top. 

“This…” she looked up at her cousin. “Is this good?”  
“I dunno, try reading it?” John shrugged, preoccupied with peering at a venus fly trap.  
“Don’t touch it,” Jade instructed, throwing him a firm glance before skimming the letter. “The oil on your hands will….” 

“What?” He asked, clomping over. His interest piqued, he snatched the letter and began to read aloud. “Dear Miss J Harley, We at News 21 seek to cover the most blah, hard hitting blah-blah…. Due to your recent involvement in current events in our city, we are delighted to invite you to our studio for an interview about your recent community efforts… assure adequate compensation for your time…. Advise on your availability… oh heck.” John folded the letter roughly. “Jade, you got an interview! You’re making it big, soon you’re gonna be the poster child for Alpha.” He nudged her with a grin.

“There is no way I’m doing that,” Jade decided, after a moment. “Best case scenario, I tell them what they already know. Worst case, I say the wrong thing and they get carried away with it. I’ve seen movies before, I know how this goes.” The thought of sitting in a chair being grilled by some terrifyingly poised journalist was uncomfortable enough. “Besides, I don’t want to be the poster child for Alpha.”  
“Are you…sure? It’d be kinda cool though.” John was tapping his chin. “And they said they’d pay you.”  
“I don’t want their money or their attention,” Jade asserted. She placed the pot she had been cleaning under a bench with the rest of her spares.   
“You already have their attention, if I recall correctly,” John was waggling his eyebrows. She couldn’t see it with her back turned, but she could practically hear it.   
“That was not what it looked like,” Jade muttered, then stood and crossed the atrium.

Her flowers for the wedding were coming along nicely. They were selected from what she already had lying around (which wasn’t much of a selection), but if all went to plan, they’d end up with a salvageable set of bouquets. She had a row of velvety red dahlias, red cyclamens, spindly white nerines, and white gladioluses. And since her selection of smaller filler flowers had been dubious at best this time of year, they had to improvise with thyme and rosemary. While unconventional, the bouquets would undoubtedly smell amazing. 

“You wanna know something weird?” John asked suddenly. Jade turned to see him hovering on the ceiling like he was sitting upside-down, messing with a sweet pea vine that had grown up its trellis and over the piping of the sprinkler system above them. “I kinda accidentally saw Dad’s emails.”  
“And by ‘accidentally’ you don’t mean ‘wore a beagle pus and snuck into his office’, do you?” Jade stuck out her tongue at him, but he didn’t seem to catch her spirit.  
“In the last month, Alpha has had to re-locate two different families because of identity compromise. Both caused by an outside source. The emails didn’t go into specifics, only the details of their relocation and stuff. Don’t you think that’s weird though?”  
Jade blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean. Is that weird?”  
“Well it’s a spike. And nobody from up the ladder has said a word.” John lowered himself to the ground, rotating slowly until he was right-side-up and sitting normally on the floor. “Granted, both were fairly recent recruits who hadn’t had a lot of chance to make a splash yet…”

Jade sighed and crossed back toward her cousin to put a hand on his shoulder. “As a scientist, let me bequeath you a little wisdom, John,” she smiled. “Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern.”  
“I’m ninety-percent certain that has nothing to do with science and you stole that from some b-grade crime drama,” John responded flatly.  
“Am I wrong? Besides, having no secret identity has never stopped me,” Jade sighed and crossed back to her flowers. “And if there is a serial identity-exposer, then Alpha’s no-social-media rule has all been for nothing and I’ve got a lot of animal videos to catch up on.”

Jade’s phone buzzed in her back pocket, and she pulled it out to see a text. _‘my sister burned a cake and now our house smells like strawberry shortcake goes to the crematorium’_ it read. She snorted, then snapped a picture of her plants, the city skyline out of focus through the glass behind them.   
_‘awww not the cake :( i’m deadheading these today! for ghost’s wedding’_ she replied, sending the image with her response. She couldn't imagine what Jane would think of this cold-blooded murder of a baked dessert. Her phone buzzed again almost immediately.  
 _‘deadheading is way too metal a term for something gardening related’_ responded Red.

“Well, I’ll leave you two alone then, I guess,” John sighed as he made for the stairs, and Jade nearly missed it because she was typing.   
“Oh! Wait!” Jade put her phone down and danced over to him. “We’re going tux-shopping this weekend. You are not wearing cargo shorts to the wedding!”  
“But Jade, they have so many pockets. What if someone needs a magnifying glass and there was nobody with enough pockets to carry one? The wedding could be ruined.” Jade rolled her eyes.  
“I think we’re safe, John.”  
“Your loss,” John shrugged, then began to descend the clanky metal stairs. “Don’t have too much fun up here,” he called over his shoulder as she watched him go.

Jade sighed, enjoying the faint trickle of water interrupting the silence in the atrium. At sunset, when the light started to die, she liked to leave the lights off and just watch the sunset through her plants. Planting herself onto the rickety wooden bench that was her only seat up in the atrium, she did just this, crossing her bare feet under her.

Her phone once again buzzed, making her jump after spacing out for so long. For a moment she thought Red was messaging her again, but this time it was her friend Feferi, sending a link to a news site. Jade clicked it, curious, and watched as the page loaded.

‘The New Faces of Alpha Are In For A Busy Season,’ read the headline, and the author was credited as the paper’s crime analyst. Curious, Jade began to skim. All it amounted to was speculation, but that was, after all, the analyst’s job as a journalist. But that speculation suggested big movements in crime circles and an upcoming spike in turf wars.

“Great. Just what we need,” Jade muttered to herself. After a moment of contemplation, she forwarded it to Red. It seemed mean to keep pestering him about Alpha, but from what little information he gave through their conversations, it sounded like he could use a stable income, regardless of his reservations. _‘sounds like I’m in for a busy month!’_ she sent, hitting send before she could decide against it.

Then, she set her phone down and resolved to not pick it up until she had finished watching the sunset. She was getting less and less time to herself these days, and she wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.


	7. Justice

Dave pressed his fingers against the wood of the front door to give it resistance as he pulled it shut behind him. As was the norm lately, he had struggled to sleep all night and ended up wandering the streets for hours. No matter what he did, he couldn't escape the feeling that he was being watched. And not because he was devilishly handsome, either.

His bonus for his work has been substantial. Between his staged fight with Vriska and being seen at that charity gala thing, he'd raked in enough monetary favor with English to have Rose's violin fixed. It had been broken for months. However, his feelings of accomplishment and generosity were fleeting; Rose had been skulking around him, obviously suspicious of his burst of income. Dave didn't think much of it, and wasn't above typing things like "blue waffle" into his search bar to scare her away from peering over his shoulder.

Like most good things, Dave's secrecy was not immortal. The previous night, Rose had spotted a picture Jade had sent him of the flowers she had been growing -- practically all she talked about. English had been disappointed to find nothing of interest -- beyond Dahlias -- when he had scrolled Dave's messages with Jade a few days prior, to "ensure his investment would prove fruitful." Dave had deflected that genuine relationships took time to build. He speculated (not aloud, of course) that English had never had a friend in his life and was oblivious to the nuances of not coming across as a clingy motherfucker.

In any case, once Rose caught on that he was in casual contact with Jade, they got into an argument that ended with Rose declaring that something didn't feel right (how useful) and that she wasn't sure if it was Dave or Jade who should be weary of the other. She was right, naturally, but he would have been loathe to admit it even if he _didn't_ have a very delicate situation that depended on him not doing so.

There was no sign of Rose that morning, though, and the apartment was quiet. The door to Rose and Kanaya's room was closed and a half-finished cup of herbal tea sat cold on the counter. Either they were in there doing whatever they do behind closed doors (catch him swerving that shit) or they were out, and he had the common area to himself for now. He dumped the abandoned tea down the sink, and took a jug of apple juice from the fridge, swigging it straight without even bothering with a glass first. It wasn't coffee, but anything that would make noise and hinder his efforts to avoid an encounter with Rose was off the cards for the time being.  
  
He kicked off his sneakers and plodded to the bathroom to wash his face, setting his shades on top of the cabinet. The water was cold, because half the time the building's hot water system was failing. Hopefully, with the pay grade he might get from helping English ransom Jade, they might move to an apartment that had consistent facilities and less flaking paint. With that thought though, came a familiar wave of guilt, which hit him with the same sort of shock that the cold water had. He raised his head to squint at himself in the mirror, as if looking himself in the eye might set him straight and give him some answers. It didn't. It just made him realize how awful he looked, with puffy bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. His red irises made his eyes look perpetually bloodshot, which he hated. Sure, some people got the mutations way worse than he did, but he still hastily shoved his shades back on so that he didn't have to look at himself anymore.  
  
There was nothing he could do. Whatever English might do to a prisoner, he would do worse to Rose and Kanaya if Dave didn't follow the plan. It didn't make him feel better, but it did give him the strength to pick his figurative ass up off the floor and quit squinting at himself in mirrors like some kind of asshole.  
  
And as if she had sensed his moment of weakness and waited until he was collected, a text from Jade made his phone nearly vibrate itself off the basin. Good thing it didn't, because even with the power to slow time, he was in no state to have saved it and he really couldn't afford to crack the damn screen any worse than it already was. He skimmed the preview and frowned. _'want to come on patrol with me today???? :)'_ it read, with her usual heinous abuse of punctuation and smiley faces.  
_'is this another one of your attempts to get me to join the scouts club'_ he responded fluidly, then took a moment to dry his face messily with a towel that was fairly due for a wash, judging by the slight damp smell.  
_'no!!! i promise i wont try to pitch you! its just something fun to do and theres no rule to say outsiders arent allowed to tag along :)'_ She responded extremely quickly. _'you can meet another one of my friends!!!'_  
_'how many friends do you have'_ he responded, after taking his time throwing all the towels in the hamper. _'are they handing them out in cheerios boxes or something'_  
  
With a start, he realized he had no change for the laundromat, and he also couldn't ask Rose if she had laundry without letting Rose know he was in the apartment, ready and ripe to be psychoanalyzed. There went whatever legitimate excuse he might have had to get out of patrol with Jade. Of course, he could lie, but lies were a tangled web that he was already in, and didn't really feel like adding to just yet. Knowing English, he would have been expected to provide laundry receipts anyway. Jackass.   
  
_'youll love her! shes kind of weird so youll get along great :p'_ Jade messaged back, then sent a picture. It was a selfie, though all that was visible of her face was her eye and part of her cheek. She was on a sidewalk, and behind her was a girl with short hair and a teal and red suit, making a fake gun with her fingers to pretend she was arresting a street cat. The cat, perched atop a mail box, seemed unconcerned by the entire affair.  
Entirely unsure what to make of that image, he responded _'if you see a cat and a mailman at the same time which one do you bark at first'_  
_'that was soooooooo rude but i will forgive you forever if you come hang out with us! ;)'_ A winky face. The drama. _'and for the record our buildings mailman is named pete and hes very nice and i would not bark at him'_  
  
Dave let his head fall against the door frame beside him and sighed. He had a day or two of clean laundry left, so he supposed he could afford the trip. It would get him out of the apartment, anyway. Finally he agreed, and threw on a set of clothes that weren't sweaty. His capes (he had three, two if you disqualified the one he never wore because it had a particularly stubborn blood stain on it) were slightly sweaty but in his defense, he was skipping the laundry to do this so he couldn't be blamed. As quietly as he could he left his house, leaving a note for the girls to put their washing in the hamper and he'd take it tonight.  
  
The part of town that Jade had summoned him to was one of the places that were ok in the daytime, which it still was when Dave arrived. The area was a little too close to English's turf for his comfort, but he could cover in a pinch. He'd just have to hope he didn't run into anyone too dense to go along with his lies. He knew for a fact that English wasn't the type to announce his plans to the whole squad. He was, infuriatingly, too smart for that kind of tomfoolery.  
  
"Red!" He heard someone shout from across the street, and he spotted Jade in her grey suit, standing by her friend in the bright teal and red. He jaywalked with caution to the other side, where Jade was soaking up the sun while her partner chugged a bottle of water.  
"Hope i didn't miss all the fun," he said flatly once he arrived at her side, hands in his pockets.  
Jade's friend tilted her head when he spoke. "He sounds like someone who wears an earring. Does he wear an earring?"  
"Red, this is Justice. Justice, no he does not wear an earring," Jade introduced patiently, adjusting the straps on the pair of round glasses she wore. He'd never really considered it before, but her dog ears made wearing glasses the normal way impossible. In the daylight, he could see a sort of harness attached to the arms, with a pair of straps looping up over her ears against her scalp, and another wrapping behind her head. At least with this mechanism, it looked more practical for movement than your average pair, even with her ears in the way.  
"Should i get an earring?" Dave asked, touching his earlobes. "I've always wondered what would happen if your towel gets caught on it while you're drying your hair."  
  
As he learned very quickly, Justice was, no fucking joke, blind. At least that wasn't her birth name or it might have been cruel coincidence. It took him about ten minutes to figure it out though, because she was walking almost normally through crowds. When he asked about it, she described it as her 'sixth sense' (whatever the hell that meant). In any case, it seemed to work for her, and she seemed to be using the retractable cane to whack people in the ankles more than she was using it to scan her path. He caught her chuckling to herself every now and then.  
  
"So this is all you do?" he asked suddenly, once they crossed a street just to go back the way they had come, but on the opposite sidewalk. "Walk around and.." he waved vaguely at Jade, who had been picking up a candy wrapper off the ground to put in the bin.  
She only shrugged. "It's not all car chases and giant spiders," she said defensively.  
"Maybe you can call some of your old gangster pals and we can have a good ol' fashioned street brawl," chimed Justice, grinning with a severe set of teeth. "If you're really that bored."  
Dave shrugged. "I can see if Maurice is free?" Justice smirked and Jade smacked his arm lightly.  
"No calling gangsters to our patrol!" she chortled. "Unless you have English himself in your contacts," she snorted. Of course there was no way she could know that he actually _did_. "We could have him politely walk into a cell for brunch."  
"No way am i _that_ important," he waved a hand dismissively.  
  
"Whoa, watch where you're going!" Justice suddenly huffed, sticking out her cane to stop a man that had been hurrying past them. "You nearly knocked a blind girl over!"  
The man was sweating. Like, a lot. He had his cap pulled low and was breathing like he'd been running. "What's up with you?"  
"Are you alright?" Jade asked quietly, though neither Justice nor the man seemed to hear.  
"Nothing. Sorry," he muttered. "Didn't see you."  
There was a long pause, before Justice smiled slowly. "I didn't see you either," she grinned, throwing up a finger gun with her free hand. "Get it?" The man, for his credit, laughed nervously. Justice patted him on the arm fairly hard -- it was more like a slap, really. "No sweat, just watch where you're going next time, yeah?"  
"S-sure," he muttered, and stepped past her once she took her cane away.  
  
So quickly that it took him a couple seconds to realize what had happened, Justice had grabbed the man's collar as he walked away and pulled him backwards, dropping him to the ground and pinning him there. Pedestrians cried out in alarm and Jade tensed, looking for a threat that might engulf them any second. But Justice only produced a handful of wallets from the man's suede jacket with a _tsk._ A pickpocket who'd been shoving his way through crowds and taking wallets as he went.  
  
"Whoever has lost a wallet today can report to the Alpha building with their name and address to claim theirs!" She shouted, holding them up. Onlookers murmured and a few clapped, which she soaked right up. Jade lifted her wrist and used that fancy Alpha watch of hers, pressing buttons and turning a dial to call a crew to collect Justice's arrest.  
  
"I would have totally missed that, and i'm the criminal here," Dave admitted, striking up a conversation while they waited. Justice was cuffing the man to a light post while chatting animatedly to an elderly man. "I wonder if she felt the wallets when he ran into her."  
"Maybe," Jade shrugged. "But she would have known for sure as soon as he said nothing was up."  
Intrigued, Dave raised a brow. "Why's that?"  
"Oh, right. Its super cool!" Jade leaned in with an excited smile. "Justice.... can sense if someone is lying or telling the truth!!! Ta da!" she waggled her fingers to accentuate the big surprise.  
  
Oh. Fuck. _Fuck._  
  
"Oh. Cool. That's awesome. Never met anyone who--" he struggled for a moment, wrestling his phone from his pocket as he spoke, "could do that before." His phone, when he finally freed it, lasted about ten seconds, into a text begging Rose to call him with a fake emergency, before dying. He only ever charged his phone while he slept, really, and since he hadn't been sleeping... his phone hadn't been charging. He did his absolute best to keep his breathing calm. The worst thing he could do was draw more attention to himself now.  
  
"Are you okay?" Jade asked, leaning sideways to plant herself in his field of vision, her ponytail swinging animatedly.  
"Yeah. Fine. Fine. Perfect. Phone," he blurted.  
"Phone?" she raised an eyebrow, laughter tugging at the corners of her lips. It might have been cute if he wasn't trying not to panic.  
"It died," he clarified. "I should find a place to charge it, my sister--"  
  
"I know a great place!" Announced Justice, who had wandered over now that her prisoner was secure. Dave forced himself to stay calm as she leaned on her cane. "A cafe a few blocks over has free charging outlets, provided you're okay with paying for a coffee first. I know i could do with one after that sick takedown," she grinned and cracked her knuckles.  
"Don't you have to wait--" as soon as he said it, sirens began to approach in the distance. Jade's left ear twitched at the sound. "Never mind," he amended.  
"Perfect!" Justice sing-songed. "I'll just be a few minutes with these guys, then it's coffee time. I think we've earned a little break, no?"  
"Absolutely!" Jade agreed enthusiastically, dancing from toe to toe. She turned to Dave. "Didn't I tell you this would be fun!?"  
  
He watched Justice meander over to her prisoner, poking him with her cane for good measure, and felt ill. All it would take was a few little white lies for her to know he was hiding something, and he couldn't lie to get out of the coffee date either. If she found out about English, not only would Rose and Kanaya be in danger, but Jade would hate him forever. Which really would happen eventually anyway, but he'd planned on avoiding contemplation of that reality for as long as possible. He'd have to just be as honest as he could without giving away anything crucial. Easy... right?  
  
He glanced over at Jade, who was still grinning expectantly at him. The worst part about this whole thing was that she seemed to genuinely invest in his false goodness, and he couldn't even sabotage that because it would only get Rose hurt. So he shrugged, trying to act as natural as possible, and replied, "It beats couch surfing at home. I'll give ya' that."  
  
He still had time. Maybe he could figure out some way to keep both Rose and Jade out of trouble. In the meantime, though, he had to worry about himself and the human lie detector.


	8. White Sugar, The Truth, and Other Inconveniences

"I think I pulled something," Sighed Justice as she slid into their booth at The Mesa. Red dumped his phone on the wireless charging pad built into their table and rested his chin on his hand, elbow propped up on the table. Justice spread out on one side, leaving Jade to slide in beside their guest, placing her glass down in front of her.

"It's so warm in here," Jade commented, crossing her legs under the table. "Why don't we spend more patrols here?"  
"Once we eliminate crime, maybe we can," Justice shrugged. "Have you given any thought to joining Alpha, Red?"  
He tensed beside her, and Jade swooped in. "He's not interested at the moment. Trust me, I've been doing my best to nag him."  
"Right," Red affirmed flatly, drumming his fingers on the table. 

"Have you ever killed anybody?" Justice asked suddenly. Red, to his credit, didn't react, but Jade just about spat out her complimentary water.  
"Only on the dancefloor," Red responded smoothly. Jade rolled her eyes.  
"Do not start with Groovemaster again," she warned.

"What was being in a gang like?" Justice leaned forward, seemingly intrigued. If she wasn't blind, Jade would have shot her a warning look. Justice was trying to twist honesty out of Red.  
"The hours are hell and if you try to join the union you get shot in the face. Would not recommend it," he replied, almost lazily. Of course, she had told him earlier what Justice's power was. If he suspected, as Jade did, that he was being interrogated, he didn't show it.  
Justice put a hand to her throat, though it was clearly for show. Clear to Jade, anyway "Do they really shoot each other? Their own people?"  
Red tensed again, and Jade snuck a sidelong glance. He looked pale. "Justice," she whispered. "Maybe this isn't--"  
"Yes."

Jade glanced at him again. Though his face was completely straight, she could see the tendons straining in his forearms as he clasped his hands under the table. She aimed a light but firm kick at Justice, but she ignored it.  
"How are they getting away with that?" Justice muttered, seemingly talking to herself. "Do they have a deal? Some sort of contact with someone who can hide the evidence? How do they--"  
"English isn't Alpha. He doesn't share information like that. His gang is not his team. He says jump, you jump or you're dead weight. There's no such thing as stopping to ask questions about what he does with the poor fuckers that don't survive staff meetings. All you can do is stay out of his way and not accept any food offerings that involve minced meat."

Justice drummed her fingertips on her jawline, her head tilted in thought. Jade could tell she was processing what he was telling her. Whether it was truthful or not, Jade couldn't tell from Justice's reactions.

A waiter shuffled up to their table with a tray of the drinks they ordered. An incredibly decadent frappe for Jade, a long black for Justice, and apple juice in a jar. Red pulled the latter toward himself and entirely disregarded the straw to chug half of it in one go. Jade used her straw to stab at the crushed ice in her frappe, suddenly in want of an appetite. 

She had known, inviting Red here today, that Justice would try and weasel information out of him. The part of her still concerned that he had been in a criminal circle had a curiosity for what Justice had found. Regular Jade was feeling terribly guilty. Red was unexpressive at the best of times. For him to be visibly stressed seemed significant. Justice was clearly digging up things that had been meant to stay buried. With this, she resolved to change the subject to the best of her ability.

"A news station asked me for an interview," She offered into the pregnant silence at the table. Justice tilted her head.  
"A first for you," she commented with a toothy smile. "When you make it big can you sign my cane?"  
"I turned it down," Jade clarified quickly before anyone got carried away with it. "My cousin says I should have taken it."  
"Why didn't you?" Justice asked.  
"Tabloid journalists are vultures," Red offered in a bored tone, back to looking as cool as a cat.

"I've seen interviews get away on people. I don't think I could handle the pressure!" The thought of it was honestly terrifying. "I wouldn't even have anything to talk about. They'd be better off with someone higher up the ladder."  
"Nonsense. You have so many hobbies that you need strings on your fingers just to remember them," Justice accused.   
"Well the only incentive is money, and I'm not exactly strapped for cash." Sort of. She couldn't access her fund yet but she knew she would never be wanting if she played her cards right and invested properly. In the meantime, she was comfortable enough not to be selling herself out.

"Jade has a neat little trust fund in the care of one of the higher-ups until she turns twenty-one," Justice leaned toward Red to fill him in.  
"Oh," he muttered. "I didn't realize you were loaded. I don't suppose you're taking applications for sugar babies?"  
Jade nearly choked on her drink and threw him a glare. "Gross! Besides, if I'm getting a Sugar Baby I will accept no less than Ryan Gosling."  
"Hurtful."  
"I don't see the appeal," Justice chimed in, flashing one of her grins. Jade groaned, trying not to laugh.  
"Why are you hiding your smile? She doesn't know it's there," Red asked, sliding his empty jar between his hands on the table like Lazer Tennis.  
"Well now she does!!" Jade scolded him. Justice's smile had become tight-lipped.

Red allowed her the slightest of smirks before turning to his phone, which had charged a fair bit now. It's screen lit up and he drummed his fingers on the table. If Justice had an impression of Red, she wasn't showing it just yet. While she finished her drink, she contemplated the possibility that she might find out something she wouldn't like. It was the smart choice not to trust him, really. And yet, here she was shielding him from the very interrogation she had played her part to incite.

Beside her, Red flinched as his phone started buzzing harshly. Jade glanced over, and saw the ID name "Rose" on his screen before he accepted. She wished she hadn't seen. Who was Rose? As Rose spoke through the line, she heard a name she couldn't quite make out. Zane? Jace? Wayne? Apart from the prominent A sound, the rest was unclear. She scolded herself for eavesdropping, but it was hard not to.

"I have a favor to ask," Justice muttered, so as not to disturb Red's conversation. "I need to borrow a dress for the wedding. I don't exactly keep showy outfits and as far as I can tell, were a similar enough shape. If it's not too much trouble."  
"Aww, why not?" Jade asked, then caught herself. "I suppose that's a dumb question. I might have something lying around, not to worry!"  
"As long as you promise not to dress me horribly," she responded. "I'll have to take your word for it."  
"Luckily for you I have great taste!" 

"I hate to do this," interrupted Red, slipping his phone into his pocket. "But I'm going to have to deprive you all of my company. Family calls."  
"I hope everything is okay!" Jade jumped up to let him out of the booth, knocking over a jar of sugar sachets in the process.  
Justice wrinkled her nose. "Ugh. White sugar. Horrid stuff," she announced, to no-one in particular.  
"It's fine," Red replied vaguely, avoiding her gaze as he dropped a note on the table for his juice. "Sorry I'm having to ditch. This was fun, for stuffy Alpha business."  
"You don't have to say that," Jade waved her hand dismissively.  
"No, I mean--" Red cleared his throat and stepped back. "I mean it. Catcha' Greenie. Nice meeting you," he called to Justice. He waved, looked at his hand, scowled slightly, then absconded from the cafe.

Jade sighed and slid back into the booth, rubbing her hands over her face. She was being ridiculous. Next time she vowed not to invite him anywhere with an ulterior motive. He had left far too much change for what he ordered, she noticed.

"I think I'm just about ready to finish our shift. How are you feeling?" Jade began neatly stuffing the sugar sachets back in the jar she had toppled. "Because if you think you've pulled something and you think we should get it looked at, I'm sure it would be fine to cut patrol short if you need medical attention..."

Justice put her own hands to her eyes, rubbing her index knuckles lightly in the bridge of her nose. "Jade, that kid is fishier than Fef. Be careful?"  
This was it. She knew this would come. "Why?" She asked, after a moment of bracing herself. Had he lied about his time in the gang? Was that really his sister on the line?  
"I don't know what it could mean. I assume you told him what I could do because he was being purposefully vague. Only, when he said he had no idea you had a trust fund, he was lying. He knew somehow," Justice warned, folding her arms on the countertop.  
"That..." She flipped the idea around and around in her mind. "That could mean anything. It's not my biggest secret ever, right?"  
"No, but it's not something you casually know about an acquaintance either. Perhaps he happened upon it organically, but it's unlikely," Justice shrugged and hauled herself out of her seat. "Watch yourself. If someone was digging for info about me, I'd want to know why. In the meantime, we still have two hours before the end of our shift.

Jade watched her make her way to the counter, and picked up the note Red had left, turning it over in her hands. Was it happenstance? Or something more sinister? Part of her wanted to call right then and there and demand answers. Cautious Jade. And regular Jade, as always, came back around. There had to be an explanation. The one thing she knew was that for all the things Red was, he definitely wasn't an evil gangster.


	9. Flights to Somalia

Rose was waiting for Dave when he arrived home. Lounged across her fraying wing chair and bouncing her legs over one of the arms, she looked far more relaxed than she turned out to be.

"Dave, sit down," she instructed, the moment he stepped in the door.  
Still rattled from his interrogation earlier, and not especially fancying another, he immediately declined. "Respectfully declined," he deadpanned.  
"Sit. Down."

Their shitty apartment was lacking in natural light, especially so late in the day. But it didn't take a spotlight to see she had red-rimmed eyes. And it didn't matter who you were; if your crying sister tells you to sit, you sit.

"It's clear you have your stubborn secrecy that cannot hope to be swayed by my constant questioning," she gargled, her throat froggy. "However you won't hide from me what I am inherently gifted to see. And what I see is you, careening down a path that ends in what appears to be your own destruction."  
"Rose--"  
"Dave," she cut him off with a sad smile. "I have been burdened with your company since birth. You are insufferable, you are ridiculous, you are deficient in the ability to communicate your emotions appropriately. Most importantly though, you are one to bear burdens that threaten to crush you, only so they may never touch the shoulders of others. It is in your very nature to shelter those closest to you." She had wiped her eyes as she spoke, moving to sit up straight and entwine her fingers.

"It is with this acknowledgement I have concluded that if I cannot dissuade you from engaging in whatever well-meaning but self-destructive activities you have burrowed yourself into, then I must do what I can to help you get out of it alive." She sat back slowly, her chair creaking, her eyes boring into him.

Dave, as a knee-jerk reaction, steeled himself to deny all accusations and quit the room as fluidly as possible. However, he found himself pushing that down. He'd had a fair walk home to consider his current situation.

English wasn't cooling off on the kidnapping. Dave certainly wasn't warm to it in the first place. Logically, he should just play his part and let that be it; status quo maintained, sister safe, abductee released after a generous payout, a hefty cut of the profit, and a possible move to an apartment with less mould in it. Unfortunately things were not so simple as that. 

There was no use pussyfooting around the fact that he had grown somewhat attached to Jade and there was no way he was going to put her in any sort of position in direct contact with English. Which meant he had to actively remove her from the situation without her finding out about it, and without getting Rose and Kanaya killed. How he would pull this off with a hitman poised outside his apartment was where he was hitting a roadblock.

He needed advice, but the last thing he needed was Rose freaking out. If she tried to run she wouldn't make it far. But perhaps she may still have some insight.

"You got me. I'm neck deep in shit and I can't swim," he sighed loudly, speaking on the exhale. If he didn't spit it out while he had the nerve, he might never do it. "I am in a situation where I've been asked to help English hurt someone. If I don't do it, he's going to hurt.... A hostage. If I do, I'm basically a terrible person forever. Either way someone gets hurt and I'm running out of time to weasel my way out of both options." He exhaled sharply. "So what I'm basically saying is how bad is Somalia really because flights are cheap at the moment and running away is looking real attr--"  
"Please slow down," Rose said firmly, sitting straighter in her chair. Though she kept her tone calm, Dave could tell she was freaked out by her body language alone. "Running from problems does not fix them."  
"Well none of my options are real options. Ever had someone offer you breakfast but all they have is unadorned toast or straight up dirt in a bowl? Neither but this is what I imagine such a scenario would be like. Only in my case the person offering is a crime lord. And instead of breakfast it's knuckle sandwich. So. Bad analogy. Anyway," Dave shifted in his chair, feeling very clammy. 

"Well," Rose sighed. "I know you tried to keep it vague, but I think I understand. I am still furious. But I understand your behaviour a little better now. Don't think I haven't noticed the man that's been parked across the street every day," she raised a brow at him. "I hate to say I saw it coming, but I literally saw it coming. She seems nice."  
He tried not to blanch. "She is and that makes it worse. It's like I'm being asked to kick a--" he stopped himself, holding up a finger.  
"Perhaps don't finish that sentence."  
"Good call, yep," he nodded. "She has a mad trust fund under the control of some adult in Alpha until she turns twenty-one, and he plans to ransom her for it. He straight up shot a guy in front of me, dude. Like, in the face. Not a flesh wound."

Rose, who had been calm up until this point, widened her eyes. "You saw someone get shot!?"  
"And it's only like the third worst thing that's happened to me this month. Fuck my life. Just fuck it in the dick, cover it in lighter fluid and burn it to the ground. Then salt the earth. And then put that earth in a box and then build a rocket and--"  
Rose raised a hand, indicating she got the picture.

"The way I see it, we can't stay here. You've gotten us into a mess and I wish to make it clear that you are not forgiven," she shot him a stern glare. "But I also understand that you didn't mean for it to get this bad, so I have resolved that I must help you. It is clear that English isn't an idiot, so he will expect us to make an escape attempt. Our only option is for Kanaya and I to coordinate our regular schedules and make a break for Alpha. We won't have much time before English realizes what we've done, so that is your opportunity to call your.... Friend, or whatever she is -- and get her to safety. After which you will match your sorry rear into Alpha and tell them you are an imbecile and a reprobate, and tell them exactly where they can find English. Then it wouldn't be a bad idea to beg forgiveness. Does that sound acceptable?"  
"I'm not hot on the begging part if I'm being honest..." Dave rubbed his hands over his face.

It was a risk. He didn't know what kind of tabs English kept on Rose and Kanaya. If they made their spies suspect, the whole operation would jet ski up shit creek real fast. The only foreseeable alternative was business as usual, which had more or less never been an option.

He squared his shoulders. It was time to get serious. "You have to be careful. At the first sign you're being followed, you bail, understand me?"  
Rose blinked. "Of course."  
"When can you do it?"  
Rose stood from her chair, shooting him a serious glance. "It's tight. Six days from now, on Tuesday. There is an hour gap between my scheduled departure and when Kanaya is set to return. Should we make our move without raising suspicion, you will have that block of time to tell her everything and get her to the Alpha building before your boss catches on."  
Dave raised a palm. "Wait, am I not telling her now?"  
"If you want her to freak out, tell someone and get us shot then that would be the logical course of action, yes," Rose deadpanned.  
"She's gonna hate me. Skin me alive and possibly use me as a very handsome rug," Dave rubbed his hands over his face.  
"That would be a reasonable reaction, all things considered," she patted him firmly on the shoulder. "But it wouldn't be the first time you've come to blows, so I don't see what the difference is."

Dave suspected she knew full well what the difference was, and refused to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it. Instead he checked his phone, which had buzzed a second beforehand. He had a text, speak of the devil. Actually, a few, which he hadn't noticed because of the heavy as fuck conversation he'd just been having.

_i just wanna say sorry for justice :( i never should have let her loose on you_

_if it makes you feel better she does this to everyone!_

_hey!!! super out of the blue question but you should be my plus one for ghosts wedding!!!!? its black tie though so.... wear your best cape!!! :p_

"Ok so Somalia though--" Dave looked up at his sister, who took his phone and rolled her eyes.  
"This is terrible. You're terrible," she accused, narrowing her eyes.  
"I know."  
"You're going anyway, aren't you?"  
"Most probably." Even if he said no like he should, English would find out quickly.  
"There's a special circle of hell, David, and you're on a go kart with no brakes headed right downhill for it," announced his sister, handing the phone back. "I hope you know what you're doing."  
"I can assure you: I do not." He sighed and rolled out of his chair. "Do I have a tuxedo?"

Rose didn't even respond, pointing to the hall cupboard where they kept coats during summer in dress bags. As he rifled through the closet, he contemplated what he could possibly say after this whole thing was done that could sufficiently make up for how much of a piece of shit he was. And he was drawing a whole lot of blanks.


	10. It's A Nice Day For A Slight Panic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't left many notes thus far but I want to say a few things/offer some info to you guys.
> 
> First, I'd like to extend a quick thank you to everyone still following this, and a big welcome to anyone who just found it. Thank you for making it this far with me! I sincerely hope you're enjoying the story, even just a little. 
> 
> My updates are obviously wildly inconsistent but I'm mostly just writing where and when the inspiration strikes me, but I swear I do have a plan! We're definitely going somewhere here. Which brings me to my main point...
> 
> So it's around this time I've started to get an idea of how long this work will be. I know it can be frustrating reading a work in progress without knowing how long you'll be waiting for the big finale. If it gives you any idea, we're getting very close to the end of... act two, I suppose you could call it. However, doing a rough count in my head of planned events, we may not even be quite halfway in terms of chapter count! 
> 
> Act three has a lot of stuff crammed into it, so you may be able to expect a few longer-than-usual chapters as events move from the interpersonal dealings of our middle chunk and into a little bit more action.
> 
> Of course, none of this is written yet, but as of writing this note, this is where my head is at for the upcoming story. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what to expect. As always, I will update as frequently and as well as I can. I appreciate so very much the kind words and kudos you've given me so far and I will see you in the next chapter -- a thus untitled Wedding Part 2.

The ceremony was gorgeous, and the flowers turned out wonderfully.

Ghost wasn't usually much of a smiler, but she beamed that day. Even her new husband, who was usually stoic and a little cantankerous, couldn't bring himself to scowl for a thing. The ceremony was in a botanical park in the city's heart, mostly for close friends and family. Only Jade and one other were bridesmaids, wearing dresses of sparkling black with white bouquets, which Jade had wrapped just the evening before. Ghost's was huge and mostly red, the silky dahlias taking prominence. 

After all was done, they hung around the park for photos. Jade had repeatedly asked Ghost if she should cover her ears, but the bride refused at every suggestion. Though she felt self-conscious, it wasn't hard to pose and smile. For the first time ever, she had used a comb and some light gel to neaten her ears' fur. 

It felt odd, but that day Ghost had spoken her vows with her true name. "I cannot take the symbol of being true to myself and then make you cover who you are," she told Jade one evening, after the final fitting. Aradia. It was pretty, and it suited her much better than Ghost did. 

By the time they left the park, just before sunset, Red had arrived. He hadn't been at the ceremony, naturally, but since the reception was across town Jade had organic for him to meet them here for a lift. She wasn't sure exactly where he lived, of course, but this had been easier for him so it must not have been far. Not for the first time, she wondered what his house was like. What his sister was like. If Jade might ever visit....

He leaned lazily against the stone pillar by the entrance to the gardens, wearing the same tux he had to the gala after their first fight together -- that is, their first fight on the same side of said fight. He wasn't wearing a cape, but kept on his shades. It might have looked odd if half the guests hadn't been wearing face coverings too. 

"Hold this, will you?" Jade called, trotting up behind him with her glittery train gathered in one hand and her bouquet in the other, offering the latter out to him. With a start, he scrambled to get a hold of the flowery bundle she had practically shoved into his hand. Jade grasped his forearm for support and lifted her leg to unbuckle the strappy heels that were pinching her skin and making the balls of her feet ache, swapping feet and picking them up. After standing on her toes for so long, to stand with flat feet made it feel as though she was tipping backwards. She released his arm and held out her hand for her bouquet, making it a point not to dwell on how firm his arm was. 

Red stared at her blankly for a long moment -- not that he was particularly emotive in the first place. He seemed to reboot and hand her back the bouquet though, looking at it as he passed it. "You did a great job on these," he offered. "I told you it would be fine."  
"As did I. Jade has probably stressed more about today than I have," Aradia chimed in, moving up to rest her chin on top of Jade's head. "Glad you could make it."  
"Glad I could come. Congrats by the way." Red pushed off the wall and stood straight. Aradia beamed at him and shrugged her thanks.

"And I'm glad photos are over," Jade sighed, swinging her silvery heels by their strap and getting a hold of her bouquet with her thumb. The rest of the party were making their way to the white limo that had dropped them off hours ago, and would now ferry them to the reception. Slowly, she made her way to follow, watching where she stepped. Red followed, oddly silent. He looked nervous, likely because he was suddenly among the bridal party in a wedding where he only really knew one person. "Don't worry, Aradia is the only one who makes a grand entrance. We get to sneak in the back."

"Aradia?" He asked, and she realised he had missed that entire development.  
"She released her identity at the ceremony. Says she doesn't really need it. So that's her name!" Jade grinned, sliding into the limo second to last, allowing him the space by the door so he wouldn't sit next to a stranger. If he had comments to make about that, he didn't make them. 

The drive was fifty minutes through traffic, and while the others cracked champagne, Red played 2048 badly on his phone while Jade took photos with hers, getting lots of candids of everyone struggling to work around Aradia's skirts poofing up in the cabin. On a whim, Jade swapped to her front camera and angled it at herself and Red. He looked up with a start but still managed to pull the same face as always while she grinned wildly. 

"You look so bored all the time," she protested, reviewing the photo with a pout.  
"And you look so happy all the time," he shrugged.  
"Is it because you hate your teeth?" She asked, leaning over and trying to see, but he pressed his lips tight in response. Useless; she knew they were pretty straight.  
"It's because smiling is uncool. I have a very carefully crafted public persona, I can't disappoint the people, Jade," he replied smoothly.  
"So you smile in private?" She prompted.  
"Never."  
"Liar!" She accused with a giggle. "You must smile sometimes."  
"And never in front of cameras," he concluded. She sighed and put her phone away.

As if sensing her disappointment, he slackened a little. "I'm a bit on edge this week. Sorry," he said, like apologies didn't come easy to him. "Shit's wack."  
"Like what?" Jade turned in her seat, unwilling to let the opportunity pass. She knew next to nothing of his private life.  
"Uh. Just.... Stuff. In general," he said, then muttered something almost incomprehensible about the economy.  
"You know, if you need to talk about it..."  
A look crossed his face that looked almost pained, or irony-stricken -- perhaps both at the same time. "Maybe some other time."

He didn't trust her. And for good reason, she reminded herself. On paper, she didn't trust him either. Yet here she was, inviting him to parties, so she was probably really bad at assigning near strangers and/or ex-gang members the mistrust they warranted. Part of her anxiousness came from their identities. Hers was out in the open and mostly unavoidable, and he kept his extremely close. Maintaining a friendship with someone she didn't know was exhausting to say the least.

The venue was by a private golf course, with the Peixes mansion as a distant backdrop. A huge marquee had been erected by the green, hung all over with glistening lights. Jade gave Aradia a peck on the cheek before leaving the limo, knowing her evening from here would be occupied by all the friends and family she hadn't had a chance to speak to yet. Red was already out, and she led him across the grass to the marquee. 

There were flooring panels laid out for a dance floor, and round tables everywhere. Her table was one near the sweethearts table at the front. John was seated next to her, and next to him were a few of Aradia's alpha friends who John knew better than she. Red was on her other side, next to Marina -- who he very briefly gawked at before sitting. Marina had been the hero version of a child actor, and was very famous. These days she mostly did desk work and worked her way up the ranks of Alpha command, but in her youth she'd been so popular she had action figures. She was having an animated chat with the young woman next to her, so Jade took a seat without stopping to greet her.

"That could be you but you playin'," John leaned over and chortled to Jade, who he had seen staring at their table guest. Jade shushed him quickly.  
"Coming from the guy who doesn't even do hero work," she retorted.  
John smiled slyly at her, then inclined his head. "Who's your friend?" He, of course, knew very well by now who her friend was.  
"This is Red," she introduced. Red was sitting with his hands in his lap and his back very straight. "Red, this isn't church, you can relax."  
"I know. If this were a church i would be on fire," he shrugged, as he extended his hand for John to shake.  
"I'm Jade's better looking cousin, John," was his introduction, and Jade kicked at him with her bare foot under the table. She hit the table instead and yelped, stubbing two of her toes at once. "Serves you right," said her cousin smugly as she keeled toward the table and huffed.

Servers came around and poured flutes of champagne to toast the newlyweds' arrival into the marquee. Jade sniffed it, and the overwhelming scent irritated her sensitive nose, making her eyes water. It was definitely real, which she wondered about. Maybe some sort of private property law -- not that laws meant much around here. The couple came in, everyone toasted. Jade held her breath and took a generous gulp, swallowing it without letting it sit on her tongue. Even so, she found it wasn't actually so bad as long as she didn't stick her nose in it. 

There were many speeches -- thankfully, Jade wasn't required to make any. Then they opened the buffet, much to Red's poorly concealed glee. Much like the gala, he jumped at the opportunity. John, equally lacking in decorum, was right up there with him. To their credit, they ate everything they took, though they took their time because John got talking about his delightfully horrible taste in film, and Red actually entertained the discussion. The bridge and groom cut the cake, and it was served shortly before the dancing kicked off, which was where the evening finally began to relax. 

"Your cousin is cool," Red mentioned to her, after John got up to unashamedly tango with his father. Jade smiled at the sight, then turned to her guest, putting down her empty second glass of champagne.  
"He gets it from me, you know," she hummed proudly. "I never had siblings. Or parents. But John and his dad are damn close enough," she announced affectionately. "Even though he always tries to scare me, or prank me. Or one time, he pretended to vomit blood."  
"That's tight," Red nodded.  
Jade pouted. "You're not supposed to appreciate it!"  
Ever so slightly, his mouth twitched. "Sorry," he shrugged. "Credit where it's due and all."  
"Yes, well," she sighed. "I hope you don't torture your sister like that!"  
"Opposite. She plays highly invasive mental gymnastics to psychoanalyze me, and then rubs it in my face when she's always right," he groaned. "But i eat her Cheerios. So ha."  
Jade tried not to overreact to the amount of information he had uncharacteristically handed her about his private life, lest he withdraw. "Do you live alone with her?" _"Do you have a girlfriend?"_ Jade had to restrain herself from physically slapping herself for that particular invasive thought.  
"Nah, her girlfriend lives with us. You wouldn't know it though, she just sews in their room all day and runs a fashion blog. And never even features me, so it's probably shitty." 

Himself, his sister, and her girlfriend. Interesting. Jade wondered what it might be like to live in an apartment -- one that wasn't also in your workplace, that is. Paying rent to some person. Calling them to fix roof leaks. Not having a lights curfew. She could see it, she supposed -- wanting to live on your on terms. Why did she need a curfew to help her city? _"Because you would stay up writing songs and never sleep properly,"_ reminded that invasive voice. She shushed it. 

"We all have our wacky hobbies," Jade concluded. "John collects Hollywood paraphernalia and plays piano. Though i haven't heard him do the latter in a while."  
"He plays piano? Wouldn't have picked it. I'd say he's more of an oboe guy, looking at him," Red decided aloud.  
"You also picked me for a climber, incorrectly," she teased, poking his arm.  
"Then by the rule of thirds my next guess will be perfect," he announced with confidence.  
"Ok then," she turned in her chair, lifting one knee and turning sideways in her seat to face him. The advantage of a split dress was being able to sit cross-legged if she wanted to. "Guess mine."  
"Your what?" He gawked slightly.  
"Instrument!"  
"That seems very private."  
She glared, trying and failing not to burst into snorting laughter. Recovering as quickly as she could, she waved her hand. "No, really!"  
"Why would i waste my perfect third guess on something like this?" He asked, raising a brow. "What if i'm at the bank tomorrow and the robbers are going to shoot me unless i can guess the code for the safe? We're gambling with my life here, Harley."  
"If you guess correctly i will dance with you," she announced, after thinking for a moment. "Aaaaaand i'll call you Groovemaster!"

He raised a brow, then turned towards her, planting an elbow on the table. "You drive a hard bargain. I guess guitar."  
"You didn't even pause to think about it!" She accused. "What if you were completely wrong!?"  
"It was a shot in the dark anyway, i don't think stopping to consider it would have helped. Unless you've got any telltale banjo pick callouses i'm missing," he leaned forward and squinted at her hands. "Nope. So?"

Jade sighed and stood up from her chair. She wasn't putting her shoes back on, but she didn't need them to tear up the rug. Red raised both brows this time, his shades sliding slightly. "Did i actually guess right? Holy shit."  
"Half right," she shrugged. "I play bass guitar. Thus i will honor half my promise and dance with you while actively refraining from referring to you as Groovemaster," she grinned and held out her hand.  
He frowned slightly. "One day i'll make you recognize who i was born to be," he promised, and slapped his palm into hers. 

She didn't realize how cold her hands had been, until his practically burned in her palm as she led him into the crowd.


	11. A Severe Misinterpretation Of Nervous Energy

"When I was a kid?" Jade asked, looking up from her task of picking at the plastic tablecloth they were sitting on -- the only thing stopping the grass from messing up their nice clothes. Shortly after dancing, they had palmed the rest of the toasting bubbles and found themselves a comfortable patch of grass just outside the marquee. Usually Dave was the one who was supposed to be the bad influence, but she was the one who had dragged him out here in the first place. The party was still roaring inside, but she had been pretty adamant about not sweating too heavily in her dress. Now they were people watching, and having some mostly useless, but entirely fun, conversation.

Currently, she was figuring out an answer to him asking what she wanted to be when she was growing up. Though by the slight smile she let slip when he asked, he got the feeling she knew right away. "I wanted to be a nuclear physicist."  
"What the hard boiled fuck?" He blurted. That was not the response he had been expecting. "Shit. And there my dumb toddler ass was, wanting to be a fuckin' dinosaur. Nuclear physicist." He scoffed, shaking his head slightly. Completely outlandish. Completely like her.  
She was chortling, seeming well pleased with herself, as she often was. "Hey, at least mine is physically possible?"  
And where was the lie? "Yet you became a furry instead. Maybe I can hold out hope for scales."  
"A superhero furry, thank you very much," she pouted, folding her arms. 

Dave sighed and leaned back until he was lying on the cold ground, pushing aside his shades and throwing his arm over his eyes, with his nose in the crook of his elbow. His suit smelled of the lavender desiccant Rose kept in the closets at home. With his eyes covered, he couldn't see the face that guilted him every time he saw it. The grass under the plastic sheet was soft and he could almost see himself sleeping like this. Going to sleep, never waking up. That would solve most of his current problems, actually. Instead he was here, awake, at a wedding, tipsy and lying on the ground, and digging his hole deeper. Had he ever told Jade anything that wasn't at least partially a lie? Was their friendship a lie because of it? Whether or not his reasons were legitimate was mostly beside the point. What would Rose say? Probably feed him some cryptic nonsense that would take him days to unravel, by which time the advice wouldn't even be relevant anymore. Thus, the only advice he had to rely upon was his own gut. So he went with it.

"My name's Dave," he told her flatly, his arm still over his face. The night was moonless, but there was more than enough light from the marquee for him to watch her from the corner of his eye, lifting his arm just slightly enough to allow him to see without showing his face.  
"Your..." she tilted her head. "Your name??"  
"Yes. You see it's this personal title, traditionally given at birth, to be used as an iden--" he dodged the bouquet she threw at him, catching it from the air with his free arm -- and only cheating a little bit with his powers to do it. He knew it must have looked extremely cool, given that he couldn't see very well. "Hey, someone worked very hard on these, you know."  
"I know what a name is!!! I'm just confused!!!" She took back her flowers and set them down gently, as if to apologize to them for hurling them at someone. "How come you're telling me this now?"  
An emotionally loaded question, ripe for the dodging. He took care to replace his shades before moving his arm away again. "I thought it seemed only fair. However, if you'd prefer to call me Groovemaster..." She grinned slowly, and it was so contagious he had to fight to control his own.  
"Dave. Nice to meet you finally!" She stuck her hand out, and he shook it awkwardly from his position on the ground. "I like it. It suits you. You could be a classy bouncer."

Dave sat up, leaning his elbow on his knee. "Hol' up. A bouncer? Not like, a cool DJ? Or a secret agent?"  
"I said a classy one didn't I?" She teased. "I think it's the shades."  
"Non-negotiable," he announced.  
"Hmm. Aren't you afraid someone will knock them off your head and reveal your identity?"  
"If they did i'd probably catch it before they had time to recognize me. I'm fast like that, remember?"  
"I guess, but you shouldn't rely on your powers. You're still bound by the average human reaction time of about two seconds, even if you can move fast! You never know what might happen!" She was right, of course, but he would rather eat bees than admit it.  
"Ignoring bad habits until they become dire problems is a bad habit that i will ignore until it becomes a dire problem," he declared with a shrug. Jade just laughed at him, digging in her clutch for something. 

In less than a week this would be over. He was absolutely certain of it. And it kinda sucked ass. He tried to think of the plus side, that once he was under the sanctuary of Alpha he could rat out English and all would be well for him and his dysfunctional little family. Sort of. He'd never purge from his brain the memory of a dude getting shot in the actual brain, and Jade would probably throat punch him when she found out about all this. And he knew for a fact he was in the background of several pictures tonight, so some poor cousin of the bride was probably going to have to spend some time photoshopping him out once everyone hated him. Dave resisted the urge to roll over onto his face and yell into the ground, so that the earth mother might hear of his suffering and swallow him up and turn him into a tree or a badger or a butt-shaped rock or something that wasn't capable of self aware thoughts.

"You seen nelancholy," Jade announced in a weird hiss as she slathered on lip balm. "Is something up?" she slipped the tube back into her clutch and put it aside. Then suddenly, she gasped, and whispered "You're not a depressed drinker, are you?"  
"I am appalled that you would accuse me so. I would have you know that I am a cool drinker." He deflected the initial question mostly by reflex, knowing he couldn't answer it. However, his mouth didn't seem to want to stop moving. "I'm in trouble."  
She sat up straighter, almost leaning over him completely. Her eyes were wide, exaggerated by the round specs she wore when she wasn't doing anything physically demanding. "What do you mean?" Her voice was higher in pitched, woven with stress. "What kind of trouble? Is it your old... er... friends? Because i can help you! I mean, we can help you. Alpha. Can give you sanctuary or whatever."  
"Ah, yes. Being locked up in the glittery tower like a princess, only prettier. Sounds fun," he drawled sarcastically.  
"I'm serious. This is serious!"  
"Don't you think I know that?" he sighed. "I know you want to, but you can't help me." Unless she wanted to assume a fake identity and skip the country.  
To his surprise, she flashed a faintly smug smile. "Then why did you tell me?"

Huh. 

"Jade, i'm going to lay some extremely vague sentiments on you," Dave declared. "You know shark nets?"  
"Sh--" Jade blinked at him, tilting her head like she hadn't heard right. "What about them?"  
"Well sometimes dolphins get caught in them. Like they're just trying to munch some grocery bags, minding their own business, when bam. Net. Not their fault. They can't see the net until they're in it. Sometimes it be like that. So people have to cut them lose before they drown. But the dolphin hasn't got a fuckin clue what's happening, doesn't know it's being saved, even freaks out because it seems like the people want to hurt it or make the net worse. It can't know because humans and dolphins don't speak the same language. Which is good because dolphins are actually super smart and would probably enslave us if they had legs and the power of speech."  
She pouted. "Is there a point to this weird story?"  
"Yes. The point is that sometimes you don't know you're trapped until you're in the net, and sometimes you don't know you're being helped until you're set free. And sometimes the vending machine drops two snacks instead of one. That's unrelated, it just happened to me today and I am pretty hype about that."  
Jade considered him for a long moment. She had very long eyelashes. The dance lights inside made her dress sparkle like stars, which he resisted the urge to watch because the stars were attached to her body and it was weird to stare. "Are you the dolphin or the humans in this scenario?" She asked after a long pause.  
" _We _, miss Harley, are the dolphins, the humans, and the net, all at once. Hashtag wisdom." He pounded his chest twice with his fist and threw up two fingers, lest the conversation get too heavy.__

___"What," sang a jovial baritone, "Are you losers doing out here?" John, wearing his tie around his head like a bandana, plopped down on the grass beside Dave. "Talking about our starving Neopets?"_  
"What?"  
"What?"  
"What?" John echoed both of them, then pointed to the manor across the green, extravagant and lit up with fuchsia spotlights. "Rich people are nuts." He glanced down and spotted the toasting champagne in Jade's hand, and promptly reached for it. Dave thought he would drink it, but instead he hurled it into the night with sudden and surprising vigor. It landed with a heavy _plod_ into the water trap nearby.  
"What are you doing!?" Jade started, clapping her hands over her mouth. "There could be fish in there!"  
"I have saved my good Christian suburbs," declared John. Then, "I didn't really think that one through."  
"You're an idiot," Jade laughed, lying back on the ground as Dave had. John followed suit. "You don't even live in this suburb."  
"God damn, i absolutely do _not_ live in this suburb." He drummed his fingers on his chest. "This is beautiful. I can see like two stars. Stunning. Nature is amazing. Wanna hold hands?"  
It took Dave several seconds to realize John was speaking to him. He raised an eyebrow and stared the guy down, until he shrugged and withdrew his hands. "We could have been beautiful, Red." John produced a phone with a cracked screen from his pocket and began scrolling idly.  
"He gets weird at weddings and family gatherings, ignore him." Dave didn't realize she'd leaned over to whisper and jumped at the sound. 

__The shock of her whispering in his ear brought Dave crashing back to earth. Suddenly he was lying on a green between a pair of weird-ass cousins, and had been drinking exactly like a dude with several life-altering secrets _shouldn't_. He had to get out of here. It was precisely as he had this thought that John sat up first, very quickly, holding his phone with both hands now. _ _

__"You guys will definitely want to be seeing this," he announced in a low voice. He held out his phone and both Dave and Jade sat up, leaning in to watch the live feed from a local news site._ _

___'--Has not made a statement about this incident thus far, but we expect to be hearing from him shortly on his accounts. For those of you just joining us: GREY, the man behind the mask of Sburb's most infamous anonymous crime expose blog 'TRUTH', has had the tables turned on him tonight. In a pirate broadcast from an unknown location less than an hour ago, the crime boss known commonly as Condesce, or The Empress, has exposed a Mr. Karkat Vantas of Sburb as GREY. In the very same broadcast, she has claimed responsibility for the spree of leaked identities over the past few weeks.' ____ _

____The video cut to a woman in an extravagant pink and gold mask, with ornate detail and looping chains. Dave didn't really listen from there. He got the general idea: blah blah, hide behind masks bad. This coming from the lady who gave herself a nickname like 'The Empress'. What was stressing him out was the implications of a lady set on digging up people's dirty secrets. Not to mention he just knew that every time that woman's name came up, his boss' entire establishment went on-edge. In fact, indirectly, Condesce had been responsible for Dave's being pinned as a potential avenue to Jade Harley. Ok, very indirect, but still involved._ _ _ _

____"Should we be worried?" Jade asked, biting gently on her second index knuckle. He could see her pointy canines. After a moment of staring, Dave realized they expected an answer from him. Fair.  
"Condesce rarely makes moves of her own, she just stalks other crime lords and turns their own operations in her favor. Remember the bridge? That girl was stealing the bag for Condesce. She found out about the deal and had the cash intercepted. Some people are even saying she gave the other guy the idea to deal with English in the first place. She plays everyone around her like pawns, and you can bet this whole parade of people's identities is meant to incite something else." Dave leaned forward and got up off the ground, brushing off his pants. "And with that bright, joyful note, i actually should get going."_ _ _ _

____"You're leaving?" John whined. "But things were just getting saucy in news room six!"  
"Sorry to steal the party away so early. I have an early start tomorrow," he lied. Jade started to get up as well, picking up her clutch off the ground, but Dave shook his head. "Don't worry, i think i can find the uber guy just fine on my own. Enjoy the party, huh?" She didn't say anything as he turned away and waved with two fingers over his shoulder. "Give my thanks to the happy couple!"_ _ _ _

____Dave could have sped across the green, but he traipsed instead, jacket flung over his shoulder. The night air had a refreshing chill, and he definitely needed to cool off. It was mere days until this was all over and he could live free of guilt. Until then, it was grass-stained socks, dodging sprinklers, and those two lonely stars. It should have been peaceful. But something had the hairs on the back of his neck standing. His phone buzzed in his pocket._ _ _ _

_____'The man outside has gotten out of his car, and is now leaning on the hood. Is something going on?' ____ _ _ _

______The text from Rose troubled him further still. Had English found out about his plan to smuggle Jade out of harm's way? Maybe he was flexing to remind Dave of his 'loyalties'. Maybe it was nothing. Still, they had to be careful._ _ _ _ _ _

___________'find the gun in the shoebox in my closet and lock the door and windows'  
'dont let anyone in and if he moves for the building call 911 and get ready to take the fire escape if you gotta'  
'dont spook him in case its a false alarm tho' ____ _

________His nerves had just about had it with this nonsense. The sooner he got away from this stupid golf course, the better. He was nearly at the road now, and finished setting up a ride quickly. The golf course had this massive circular driveway into the members' club, with a big dumb fountain in the middle. He sat on it, facing the road, tapping his heel impatiently. He checked his phone every three seconds, but the only response he'd received from his sister was a simple affirmative._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He was so on edge that he didn't even hear her bare feet on the pavement until she was practically upon him. She worried at the shoes in her hand, and he might have been overwhelmingly thrilled to see her if the circumstances were different. Right now, she was the adorable cherry on top of his problems._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"What're you doing out here?" he asked as calmly as he possibly could. The last thing he needed was to freak her out as well. "There party's back there."  
"I know," she sighed, and sat down next to him on the fountain. Not good. He should not be letting her get this close. As much as he repeated that to himself, he took exactly zero actions to prevent it. "You kinda ran off."  
"I do that a lot," he answered truthfully. He was very good at running. Except for now, when running was actually the correct and healthy path to take, he couldn't do it. He was running from running. Swiss fucking cheese on a sandwich. He was a mess.  
"I can't believe I used to beat the crap out of you," she laughed, resting her chin on her hand. "And now you're my plus one at events and stuff."  
"Whoa, okay, clearly you have misinterpreted your own memories because i very clearly recall it was i who..." he trailed off. She smelled like cucumber and mint and fur. She was sitting far too close. Now she was staring at him because he hadn't finished his sentence. English was going to hurt her. He might kill her even after he got his money. "Jade, there's something..." he swallowed what was either damning words or bile. Hard to tell. 

________The pressure was too much to bear. The story was about to come tumbling out in one horrible, panicked word vomit and he wouldn't be able to stop it this time. He opened his mouth to tell her, but no words came out, because she leaned over and pressed her mouth against his so suddenly that he nearly fell right back into the fountain. Dave knew he should be alarmed and concerned by this turn of events, but his brain took a Splash Mountain slide out of his left ear and landed with an imaginary wet slap on the pavement beside him. He had no idea what to do with his hands, and lacked a functioning brain to think of something, so they hovered midair either side of her like he was a robot, or a lego man, frozen in place. For a very brief moment, he genuinely believed this night to be the best of his life. And then, it imploded._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________"Couldn't have hoped for a better distraction, kids," interrupted a low, calm voice._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Ice shot down Dave's spine. His brain hopped up off the pavement and flew back into his ear with a hollow _thunk _. Systems re-booted. Dave stood and pushed Jade behind him in one move, nearly toppling them both into the water for how heavily he wanted to back as far from English as possible. He hoped to all hell that Rose had used that premonition of hers to call for help prematurely. She was about to need it, because Jade wasn't going anywhere with this guy.___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________English considered them for a long moment. The silence seemed to stretch forever as he glanced between them. Behind him, five men with guns clearly in their hands were leaning against dark-tinted sedans. "I honestly can't say I didn't see this coming. Good thing I protect my investments." He produced a phone from his pocket, and took the time to unfold, wipe, and put on a pair of spectacles, fashionably too small for his face. "Hey, super out of the blue question, but you should be my plus one for Ghost's wedding. It's black tie though, so, wear your best cape. Colon, lower case p." He folded his glasses up again and tucked them into his breast pocket. The son of a bitch had tapped his phone during one of their scarce meetings. Dave felt like an idiot not to have seen it coming._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________"Dave," Jade said slowly, more like a warning than a question.  
"This is entirely my fault and I promise I will explain, and you can hate me if you want to, once I do that," he said over his shoulder, arms still braced to keep her behind him. "But right now we both need to be as far from this man as physically possible without entering orbit."_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________English's men raised their firearms, and he felt Jade tense behind him. After a long pause, she breathed "Sounds like a plan," and that was all the permission he could wait for before he snatched her around the waist, and flashstepped right at the gunmen._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	12. Driving Miss Harley

Jade found herself very suddenly in a different place, midair, with three men turning to point guns at her. And she was _pissed._  
  
Her powers kicked in and caught her before she fell back to the ground heavily. Dave's forethought to toss her had bought her a few seconds to get her bearings, drop to the ground in a crouch, and tackle the closest gunman to send a current of biting electricity straight into his neck. He slumped and she kicked his gun under the sedan beside them as she dodged out of the way of two shots from her other assailants. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dave kick a leg out from under one of his guys, sending him down. He swayed, as he often did when fighting, and his form blurred on the spot. He made a kick again, but the man had already stumbled out of range from the last blow. Dave shook himself and kept on. Jade frowned at the behaviour, but was too mad and distracted to worry too much about it.  
  
_Channel the fury, Jade,_ she told herself as she dove at a second assailant, slapping his pistol aside and cracking his nose with her elbow. She moved behind him and used him as cover from his buddy, who was aiming right at them, obviously unsure enough of his aim not to shoot. His form blurred and then he was down, Dave standing over him. Jade whirled her hostage around and backed away from English, whose calm facade had fallen to a silently furious glare. Jade slipped her hand into the pocket of the man and, thank her stars, found keys there. She clicked the fob a couple times, and the sedan to their right blinked  
  
"Last chance to make the wise choice, Strider," sighed English, messing idly with his cuffs. He wore a striped shirt and suspenders, and in general seemed immaculately groomed. He was bald, with a diamond earring in his left ear that glinted in the dim light. Dave's last name was Strider, which she refused to acknowledge as cool because she was very, very angry with him right now. And confused. But mostly, angry. She tossed Dave the keys with a little more force than was probably necessary, but he caught them nonetheless.  
"Love to chat, gotta run," Dave replied in a deadpan, then spun on his heel to walk to the car. English scowled, and raised his arm.  
  
Jade barely had time to begin to shout before English shot at him. Her shriek echoed off the pavement and down the empty street a Dave's form blurred, and she watched with her breath held as he stumbled to the side, clutching his right arm just above the elbow.  "Get in the car!"  
  
They both ran behind it, piling in the same door because English still had a very real gun in his hand. Jade curled down low in the passenger seat, tangled up in her dress, as Dave turned the car over and hissed, revving the car into movement. It bunny hopped and sputtered, nearly stalling, and she saw him struggling with the stick shift. "Can you even drive this thing!?" she shouted as she peeked over the edge of the window, sure English should have shot at them by now. But instead, he was standing with the pistol at his side and his phone to his ear, watching them slowly gain speed.  
  
"I can, under normal circumstances," he snapped defensively, sounding nothing like his usual calm tone. "However, the combination of not having driven in six months and having an actual fucking bullet wound in my arm is somewhat hindering my -- ow -- progress!"  
"Do not get snappy with me, mister! If there is anyone who should be making complaints right now, its me! Okay!? I am--- ok yeah that's bleeding a lot," she felt a lump in her throat as she saw the pooling blood around the tear in his white dress shirt. She reached over and took the lower half of the sleeve, yanking it hard. He yelped, but it came loose, and she used it as a makeshift bandage, struggling to tie it as he drove at speed to the end of the boulevard and took the corner far too quickly. "Be careful! We already lost him!" She scolded.  
He threw her a glance. "I would bet my last dollar that we have definitely not lost English." He grunted as he shifted the stick again, then seemed happy to leave it there as they got on the freeway.  
  
There was a long silence as she tied her poor, beautiful slit dress in a knot by her knee. The car smelled of leather and cigarettes and Dave's blood. Her hair was falling out of its elegant updo and was caught on her left ear. She thought about asking him to explain what had happened, why English had access to their text conversations, why Dave had said it was his fault, and what English had meant by "investments", but somehow she found she had more pressing questions.  
  
"Where are we going?"  
"My house, maybe. I need you to--" he paused and took the wheel with his bad arm, pulling out his phone from his pocket and swiping his fingerprint. "Find Rose in my contacts, call her. She's in trouble."  
"Well, that makes three of us," Jade muttered, but she obliged. However, she scrolled three times and couldn't find Rose listed. "She's not in here?"  
"Oh. Sorry. Forgot. Look for 'Flighty Broad'."  
  
There it was. Jade pressed the dial button and put it on speaker, but there was no sound. Dave mentioned his phone was a 'piece of shit' and the bottom speakers didn't work. Deciding against holding the phone to Dave's ear for a whole conversation, she held it to her own. The tone rang five times before an answer came.  
  
"Dave," answered a voice entirely unlike Dave's. Where Dave's was lazy, tinged with a southern accent that got stronger the more passionately he spoke, Rose's was entirely calm and collected. It was like listening to a perfectly trimmed hedge. "We've had an altercation. The man tried to enter and Kanaya hit him over the head with the frying pan. He is currently locked in the boiler room and we are in his car. Please advise."  
"Uhhh," Jade stammered. "Dave's driving. This is Jade. Are you okay!?"  
"Hm. Nice to finally meet you, in a sense. We're fine. Kanaya got blood on her nice blouse, but we are otherwise unscathed." Rose sounded surprised, but didn't miss a beat.  
"Hang on, i'll tell him!" Jade said cheerfully in her phone voice. She couldn't help it. She put her hand over the bottom of the phone and leaned over to repeat what Rose had told her.  
"Don't mention locations. We don't know if English can listen to my calls as well as read my texts. Tell her to meet us where i threw her surprise 'i knew you were a lesbian all along' party," he instructed. "She'll know what I mean."  
"You are a horrible brother," she whispered harshly, then returned to her conversation with Rose. "He told me to tell you not to mention locations because we're being tapped, and to meet us at the place where he threw you a lesbian party??? I don't know what that means but hopefully you do!"  
"I know what it means. Tell him he is a horrible brother and we will see him there." Jade could hear someone laughing in the background, presumably Rose's girlfriend.  
"Do you have your phone still, Harley?" Dave asked, and when she nodded, he said "great, give Rose your number."  
  
Jade did so, making sure to have Rose read it back so she had it right, then promised to meet them at the mystery location. Jade hung up the phone and it returned to his home screen. Recognizing the image she'd sent him ages ago of the flowers in her atrium, Jade was unsure whether to smile or angry cry, reminded quickly of the very fucked up circumstances they were in the midst of. As if to solve her problems, Dave reached over, took his phone, and tossed it out the open window beside him. It sailed over the side of the bridge they were on and disappeared into the darkness below. Jade's phone buzzed in her bag, and saw Rose had sent her a text to verify her number.  
  
"So are you going to explain all this?" Jade finally blurted, trying and failing to keep the heat out of her tone.  
"It's a complicated story to tell," he warned.  
"Try," she instructed firmly.  
Dave sighed, steering with his good hand on the top of the wheel and his bad one weakly gripping the bottom of it. "I never left the gang. English knows about your trust fund. When that dude in the crowd took that awkward photo on the bridge that day, the boss decided you n' I were buddy buddy enough that he could use me to get to you and your cash. I was s'posed to check in with him so he could make sure I was keeping contact. The plan was supposedly that when he instructed me, I would ask you to meet me somewhere and he would intercept and ransom you to Alpha. I guess he didn't trust i'd actually do it, because he tapped my phone and took it upon himself to read our messages."  
Jade was doing her very best not to cry, even though her eyes stung. "Would you have done it?" She asked quietly, afraid to know the answer.  
"Fuck no," he answered heatedly. She could tell he was affronted by the question. "The only reason i didn't tell him to go fuck himself from day one was because that guy Kanaya mauled with a fry pan has been parked outside our apartment for weeks, waiting to shoot Rose in the face if i tried to cry foul to the authorities or you." He didn't say it, but she could read his _"How can you ask that?"_ between the lines. She didn't know what to believe anymore  
"Don't sound so offended, Dave. I'm the one who just found out the guy she'd been smashing faces with at a golf course not one hour ago has been involved in a plot to kidnap her for their entire correspondence!!!" She growled in frustration. "You don't get to be affronted! You sit, you listen, and you think about your choices!"  
"My choices? It wasn't my bright idea to ransom a high profile heiress," he snapped back, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.  
"And joining the gang in the first place? What about that?" She turned to the window, wiping furiously under her glasses.  
"Well McDonalds wasn't returning my calls and the rent was overdue, so my hands were somewhat tied there," he tipped his head back to lean it against the headrest. "Alpha is nice and all, but they don't hire just anyone. It's nice if you make the cut, but the rest of us are just doing what we can to survive."  
  
Jade leaned her head against the window, letting the cold of the glass seep through her entire body. She wished the darkness beyond the glass would just swallow her up. There was a clawed hand of anxiousness squeezing her lungs, never letting go. She still had so many questions, most of them ones she was afraid to ask, both because their answers might ruin her, and because she couldn't stop crying and it was extremely undignified. Part of her understood. She understood his desperation, heard his distress, knew that despite his sister's peril he'd pushed her behind him and fought with her to get away from English. The other part -- the reactionary, emotionally-fuelled mess that ruled her -- was too furious, distressed, tired, and confused to accept any of those understandings into consideration.  
  
"I never wanted this to get to this point. We were supposed to sneak Rose and Kanaya into Alpha in a few days and explain everything to you once it was safe. If i'd known he would have acted on his own--" she could see him look at her from the corner of her eye as his sentence trailed off. "I'm sorry."  
"Sorry that it happened, or sorry you were the one involved?" she responded, her voice gravelly.  
"Sorry that I let it happen."  
  
They were on surface streets now. Many eateries were either closed or closing, but a little diner on the corner was still ablaze in all its 24 hour glory. Dave pulled up outside it, grimacing as he pulled the hand brake. Inside, Jade saw a short, dark-haired girl sitting across from a tall platinum blonde in a window booth. They shared a milkshake. Jade wiped her eyes and gathered her clutch, hastily shoving her feet back into her shoes.  
  
"I mean it Harley. There was no good way for you to find out but this was probably the shittiest case scenario." He was fidgeting in his seat. "Are you okay?"  
Jade dug up the courage to look him in the eye, only to meet her own reflection in his stupid shades that he never took off. Her anger seeped away, to her surprise, and left numbness in its wake. "Was this.... were we a lie?" He stared at her blankly for several long seconds, his mouth slightly agape. It could have been nanoseconds or hours. She couldn't tell. That clawed hand squeezed in her chest, and she scrambled for the door handle before she had to endure another second of this.  
"Jade wait--" he got out the other side and looked at her over the roof of the car. "Wait a second!"

  
She should have known the answer without asking. People like Dave lived too fast to make stops for people like her. Had he not been forced, his life would have sped on without her. "Never mind. Forget I asked. Sorry," she said, throwing the words over her shoulder as she barged into the diner, desperate for conversation with a human who hadn't crushed her heart on command.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this chapter has a few mistakes! I was in a bit of a rush to finish it quickly because I know that cruel cliffhanger stressed some of you guys out a bit ;p No cliffhangers today, but not necessarily any less stressful, I think. I feel like I need to eat a tub of ice cream and watch something with Molly Ringwald in it after writing this. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Next chapter hopefully shouldn't be too far away.


	13. Breath On The Glass

When Dave entered the diner, he was surprised to find Jade and Kanaya disentangling themselves from a hug. Rose had slipped out of the mauve knit sweater she was wearing and passed it to Jade, who accepted as she slid into the booth next to Kanaya. He had a jacket. Why hadn't he thought of offering it? Add that to list of reasons why Dave Strider was an asshole.

When he slumped into the booth next to his sister, she shot him a stern look that said 'this didn't go well.' And how right she was. Harley was picking at a napkin. The good news was, she wasn't crying anymore. Unfortunately, the bad news was, the crying had been replaced with an emotionless haze. It was somehow worse. He'd managed to snap the most expressive human on earth.

"We can't stay, obviously," Rose began, when nobody else seemed to want to take the initiative on that front. "We now have a mobster very invested in finding us. Alpha may be our only sanctuary from our assailants."  
"I can get us in," Jade sighed. "But what about after that? Will he just give up? I don't even understand why he wants to go to the trouble of ransoming someone!"  
"There's been rumours that his institution has been struggling financially," Rose piped up. Dave had no idea she'd been reading up on this stuff, but then, it was entirely like her to do her homework. "His organisation is the most fearsome in number and reputation in this city, which likely makes it the most expensive."  
"I concur. His behaviour, to me, comes across as desperate," Kanaya agreed. "But, you two haven't told us your half of the story. You look like you've been in a street brawl."

Dave quickly filled them in, right down to the tapped phone, and how it was currently lying in a shattered lump somewhere under the freeway.

When he'd finished, Rose nodded. "And here I was, thinking Kanaya and I had been having an insane night. What's your plan from here?"  
"Go to Alpha, I guess. Once you guys are out of the firing line I'm telling them exactly where the fucker lives, too. And I think a sternly worded Yelp review might be in order, if I'm feeling spicy. I'll stuff his exhaust pipe with wet toilet paper and crayons. Maybe I'll snail mail him selfies every day in jail? Wait I'd need a new phone first..."

A waitress came over and asked if they needed anything. Jade asked for water and everyone else was silent. The waitress didn't look happy, but they couldn't be there long. Already, Dave felt antsy from sitting in one spot while English was chomping at the bit to put Dave's head on a spike, and kept eyeing every car that drove past. His eyes returned to the table, and he caught Jade staring at him with a vaguely disappointed frown on her face. She looked away quickly.

If only he had the words to fix it. It was like she'd been this blazing fire, and he had thrown a bucket of water over her. It was painful, most of all because he knew it was his fault, and every time he drafted the words he might say to apologize, the imaginary conversation ended in shouting, silent fury, or wildly tone-deaf finger guns. If only he'd thought to slow down time when she had kissed him by the fountain, back before this evening dropped a molten burrito rocket shit out of a moving airplane and directly onto his head.

Rose was checking live traffic for a path out, and Dave leaned over her shoulder to see. There was a crash on the freeway heading where they needed to go, but Sburb was effectively a grid anyway, so they could take surface streets.

Jade practically inhaled her water. It was clear that she was desperate to be out of this establishment, the way her feet tapped as she tried again and again to smooth the wrinkles she'd made in her dress when she had to tie it up. Her ears were set back slightly, and twitched at the slightest sound.

"You should text John. Let him know where you are and where you're going to be," Dave told her, leaving 'just in case something happens to us' out of the sentence. She nodded and pulled out her phone, avoiding eye contact. Her fingers made soft taps on her screen and then she put it back in that tiny purse she'd managed to hold onto.

"And with that, I think we should go," Rose announced. "I suspect we've exhausted our welcome." Indeed, the waitress was leaning against the counter with an annoyance unlikely directed at the patrons who ordered food. Feeling guilty, Dave fished in his wallet. Eight dollars and a quarter. Depressed that such a small amount was all it took to empty his pockets, he slapped it down on the table so he didn't have to look at, or think of, his finances. Especially since he was pretty sure he was VERY fired and English wouldn't be writing any references for his CV.

He slunk outside to the car they'd rolled in with, throwing himself into the driver's seat. As he used his sore arm to swing in, a biting pain dug into the wound. He expected that moving the broken skin was tearing it further, but he didn't have much time to worry about that right now. He hadn't bled out yet, and that was the main thing.

It wasn't until Kanaya threw herself into the back seat alone that Dave noticed Rose and Jade were still just inside the door of the diner, having a conversation. Rose had that look on her face, like she was depositing unsolicited wisdom on someone. Typical. He turned the key and revved the engine. He'd failed to rescue Jade properly from English, but he sure as hell would rescue her from Rose's psychoanalysis.

"You did the wrong thing," Kanaya said suddenly, and he could see her watching them exit the diner. "But for the right reasons. Which means there is hope for redemption."  
"I think it's probably polite to let the corpse of my friendship with Jade to go cold and stiff before I start looking for redemption," Dave sighed, testing his arm movement with the shifter. If he moved it slowly, it wasn't too bad.  
Kanaya only chuckled. "I meant redemption within yourself. I've lived with you long enough to know that no matter how badly she thinks of you for what you have done, you think twice as badly of yourself."  
"I think my sister has rubbed off on you a little too much," Dave told her flatly, after a pause.  
"Nonsense," she replied confidently. "I wouldn't be caught dead in purple."

Jade fell into the front passenger seat and swung the door shut. Once he heard Rose's door close behind him, he carefully moved the car into first and took off down the street. "Rose, I hope you've got your navigation hat on because I have jack ideas about where I'm going."  
"You want to take the right after next and follow that for fifteen blocks," she called, apparently already on the task.  
"John is meeting us there," Jade told him quietly, almost so that it was hard to hear over Rose and Kanaya's conversation. "Apparently a group of drunk guests found our unconscious friends by the fountain and they were just starting to freak out because I'd disappeared."

It was more information than she needed to give. He might be crazy, but it felt like an olive branch. Though, he didn't want to push it too hard, lest she get mad and poke his eyes out with it.

"I feel bad for crashing Aradia's wedding with hitmen," he confessed. "Though it'll probably be a cool story in a few years when the threat is no longer real and terrifying."  
"Do you think he'll come after us?" She asked, clearly worried. Worried was about the correct response.  
"He's more desperate than I've ever known him to be. Not that we were best buds or anything, but you tend to hear about it when your boss shows up personally to this kind of business." Dave tapped the wheel with his fingers. "Shit's wacked up. There's some other piece to this shitty puzzle, and it's wedged between the sofa cushions. Something has made him desperate. The more--"  
"Turn right here, Dave," interrupted Rose, and he spun the wheel almost entirely with his good arm.  
"The more you think about it, the weirder the whole situation seems?" Jade finished for him.  
"Yeah. Yeah pretty much."

Jade folded her hands in her lap, lost in thought through the next couple of turns. Now might have been the perfect time for the most genuine apology in history, except it was majorly awkward with his sister and her girlfriend on the back seat. Nothing like an audience to really coax one into a conversation about the misfortune of having accidentally made out with someone under false pretenses.

"It wasn't--" he'd just begun to formulate a sentence when a force hit the car so hard that it nearly fishtailed out of control. Dave swore and fought to correct their path, looking out his side mirror to see a sedan identical to the one they were in, right on their tail, and what looked like a second further back. 

"Those seatbelts better be buckled, kids," he called, pressing on the gas. "Rose, you're going to have to navigate me outta this mess or they will shoot me in my pretty face. My beautiful face, Rose. No pressure."  
"I'm thrilled for the opportunity," she responded flatly. "Not the next street, but the one after, you need to take a right," she instructed.  
"Spirit of Lightning McQueen, don't fail me now," he muttered to himself as he slammed the brakes, clumsily threw it down a gear, and moved toward the left curb before swinging right and into the next street. The engine complained as he floored it.

Their pursuers were keeping up okay, though they had lost a bit of ground on the last turn. Still, if they were in sight, they were probably within firing range. They hadn't shot yet -- probably for fear of hitting Jade by mistake. She was gripping the Jesus Handle with white knuckles. Kanaya, who had a disposition to be motion sick, was already groaning in the back. Rose was, thankfully, on the ball with instructions. They wove through streets, though Dave wasn't exactly Mr. Gran Turismo and his efforts to lose their pursuers on the corners were mostly ineffective.

After their seventh turn, he went to shift up and his hand slipped off the gear knob entirely, a slick substance affecting his grip. He spared a glance down to see his arm had bled through their makeshift bandage, and thick, sticky blood was now spiraling down his forearm. "Yep, that seems about right," he muttered to himself as he scrambled to correct the literal slip up.

As they straightened onto the next road, their hiccup cost them. One of the cars pulled up on the passenger side, engine roaring. Jade, to Dave's extreme displeasure -- which manifested in the form of a very inelegant, panicked "what the fuck are you doing" that got lost in translation somewhere between his brain and his mouth, resulting in an oddly enunciated screech,) -- wound down the fucking _window _.__

A beefy dude was hanging parallel to her in the opposite car, hanging out the back window. He reached toward their car and Dave swerved before Jade got snatched, but she turned and yelled at him, "hold the car steady!"  
"Have you completely fucking lost it!?" He replied, swerving again as the man tried to grab at her hair, which was flapping wildly in the draft.  
"Trust me like I trusted you, and we might make it to Alpha in one piece," she yelled back with a determined glare. That sounded pretty resolute, and he couldn't argue with that unless he wanted to be a complete dickhead. He met her gaze and nodded, returning his eyes to the road because crashing would be counterproductive.

The other car swerved, and this time Dave held the wheel straight. Rose and Kanaya were huddled on top of each other on Dave's side of the car, as far from the swerving vehicle as possible. Jade was on her knees with her seatbelt off, one hand on the dash and the other obscured from Dave's view. As the man came withing distance, he grabbed at Jade. This was when she raised her hand, fingers sparking with green light, and dug her nails into her attacker's face. He seized and fell back into the car.

"Fuck yes!" She screamed, throwing her hand forward in her victory as the car swerved away slightly. Though, not so far that a second passenger couldn't reach forward and take hold of her wrist. She yelped and toppled forward, stopped only by Kanaya, who jumped forward to grab the back of her dress from behind the seat. Dave whipped his arm out and caught Jade's forearm, wincing as his wound pulled. The man let go of her as she zapped him, but she stayed at the window for a moment before collapsing back inside.

She looked down at her arm, smeared with his blood, then at Dave. After a moment, she said "I've had it up to here with English and his stupid --" she reached up and punched the button for the sun roof, watching as it slid back. It was actually kind of slow, and somewhat ruined the drama of the move, but this did nothing to ease Dave's concern.  
"What are you doing? I swear to Mark Ruffalo, Jade, put your seatbelt back on and stop hanging out of this vehicle before I suffer literal cardiac arrest," he said sidelong, concentrating on driving.  
Jade ignored him and lifted herself to a kneeling position, her hands on the edges of the sunroof. Then she paused, and looked down at him with a smile. "Please. What's the top speed on these things? 130?" she poked her tongue out at him, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "I've fought a guy way faster than that, and he's never bested me."

And then she flew out of the car.

The first, closest car went down so fast, he almost missed it because he was watching where he was going. He just saw it stall and start to smoke horribly, falling back. Jade was still crouched on the hood with sparks flying around her, waiting to pounce as the second sedan screeched toward her. She launched into the air, rolling like a torpedo to stay slightly ahead, making the driver chase her. When it caught her, she flipped from the right fender, over the car, to the left side, and planted her palm on the front panel. As the first vehicle went down, so did this one. She zapped the car, shorted the electronics, and left them in the proverbial dust.

"Why don't you ever do anything this spectacular, Dave?" Asked Rose, as he slowed the car to let Jade catch up.  
Under his shades, Dave rolled his eyes. To his growing concern, the action made him lightheaded. "This coming from the girl whose special power is vague approximations of future events," he muttered over his shoulder.

Jade slipped back into the car, swinging into her seat legs first. She had a massive grin on her face, and though she didn't say it, he could practically feel the 'did you guys see that!?' radiating in the cabin. "That was so fun!!!" She exclaimed after a moment. "Oh my god, why don't I do more car chases?"  
"Because they tend to involve life threatening situations?" Offered Kanaya, laughter in her voice.  
"Dave, keep your eyes on the road!" Rose scolded, and he jerked to correct the wheel before they scraped a parked car. He blinked, but it felt slow, and he had to shake his head to snap out of it.

"Where's alpha?" he muttered, wiping his hand on his shirt. The blood loss was starting to get to him, and he hoped to all hell they weren't far.  
"Are you okay?" Jade asked. "Do you need to--"  
"Two streets, Dave. Left, then second on the right," called Rose urgently.  
He reached down to move the stick, his bloodied arm shaking. Jade batted his hand out of the way and did it for him, awkwardly shoving it into third. "Thanks," he croaked, cradling his bad arm to his body.

Two turns. Between his lightheadedness, and Jade's limping attempts to see which gear was which in the dark, it was a miracle when they finally pulled up in front of the chrome tower that was Alpha HQ. Jade jumped out and came around, opening Dave's door and practically lifting him from his seat. His head spun violently as he stood, but now that he didn't have to steer, he was able to clamp a hand over his wound to slow the loss of blood. They rushed to the doors, Rose almost shattering the glass for how forcefully she thrust them open, and Jade called to the woman at the desk that she needed to contact the wedding party and have someone from the infirmary ready with sutures.

He wasn't sure if he passed out, but there was definitely a lapse in his conscious memory. Probably for the best, because just seeing the line into his vein nearly made him vomit. Having had to witness it being put in would have definitely had him taking a dive into chunksville. They were giving him blood, and his arm had a fresh bandage. He could definitely feel the uncomfortable tug of stitches. And despite to process probably having taken a while, Kanaya, Rose, and Jade were still in the room. Kanaya was asleep in Rose's lap. Rose was reading a home gardening magazine. Jade was visible in the hall through windows, pacing.

"Can we have someone take this out before i rip it out?" Dave asked, and his sister looked up with a sigh.  
"Nice to see you responsive. The bag's nearly empty; be patient," she responded firmly. She saw him looking past her, through the windows, and shook her head. "Well the good news is she doesn't hate you."  
"Did your hocus pocus psychic powers tell you that?"  
"No," Rose threw him a look. "She could have been sleeping all this time, but she's been prowling the hall like a caged lion."

A nurse came and removed his line while he tried not to hurl. The feeling was awful, but at least he was awake. The nurse handed him two bottles of water and very sternly insisted he drink lots of water and get some rest. Rose took them off his hands and helped her very sleepy girlfriend out to the hall.

"Finally," Jade huffed, still in her sparkly dress, which had seen better days. Or hours, as the case may be. "John's on his way. Everyone knows about what English did, and Marina's golf course has security cams that caught the whole thing."  
"English is pissed, though. And desperate," Dave reminded her, leaning against the wall.  
"Maybe. But for now, that's his problem, not mine," Jade said confidently. However, her confidence was short-lived, because her phone started ringing in her hand. "S'cuse me," she whispered as she answered, taking a few steps away.

Her conversation was short. She spoke a few words, then lowered the phone from her ear to jog across the hall, where the windowed wall of the building gave them a view of the streets below. She pressed her forehead against the glass, and looked down. Dave could see her breath clouding up the glass. So quietly that he barely caught it, he heard her whisper "oh damn."

Rose, Kanaya, and himself all followed suit, straining to see what she was looking at. At first, he saw an empty street, but that's when he noticed it wasn't empty. At almost every side street, alley, or corner, cars or people were lurking. And right on the curb, sitting and smoking a cigar, was English.

"Did they tell him we're closed?" Dave asked, watching Jade lower the phone slowly.  
"I don't think he cares," Jade whispered, then met his gaze, wide-eyed. "I think he really, really wants that money!"


	14. Reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not super relevant, but if anyone who has been following this work has noticed it sometimes gets bumped to the top despite not having been updated, I apologize. I think archive's update system doesn't differentiate between unpublished draft chapters and new entries. As such, the site treats drafts as an update, even though they aren't visible to readers yet. I suppose they still technically exist as a chapter as far as the algorithm is concerned.
> 
> I try not to save chapters as drafts on the site because of this, since someone has said they had issues with receiving update notifications for this work and I suspect the drafts situation is why. Sometimes I need to work on the story where I can't take my PC though, so once again this one was bumped a day or two before the actual chapter was released. Sorry about this! I'll continue to keep the drafts in word processor when I can.

There was nothing quite like a drawn-out meeting in a packed conference room (full of very tired, very tense human weapons) to remind one of how tired they are after a night of being shot at and stopping vehicles at speed.  
  
Dave insisted on coming along. He didn't really need to, and he wasn't strictly invited, but nobody seemed too stressed about her plus one when they walked in the door. Having lived here for years, she recognized many faces. What alarmed her was that even though the conference room was filled with people, many of them weren't hard hitters. She knew that the wedding had trapped many of the Alpha roster that she knew out of the building, but it was striking her now just how many of their finest were on the other side of town, separated from Alpha by a blockade of criminals. Even people not at the wedding were absent purely because not everyone in Alpha took residence in the building. Not ten minutes into the meeting, they were informed that a person attempting to fly in had been shot from the sky and rushed to emergency. She'd checked, but to her relief, it wasn't John. They were still at Marina's golf course, holed up (no pun intended) and waiting for orders.  
  
A lot of the meeting was strategy between a small circle of command, but Jade was zoning out fast. She heard someone say the word 'siege' and it bounced around her head like a pinball. She couldn't help but feel responsible, in a way. She had always been open about her identity. It was nigh impossible because of her appearance, but maybe if she had tried.... or even, not become a hero in the first place. Had she lived as one of those people who fade into the background, who see trauma and turn the other way, none of this money business would have been info someone could stumble across by scrolling her wikipedia page. Perhaps Dave had the right idea, using his powers to save himself and letting everyone else fend for themselves.  
  
As soon as the thought passed her mind, she felt guilty. She knew she probably should be too furious to feel guilty, but it was what it was. Jade had tried fury, and it was admittedly satisfying, but also... entirely exhausting and ultimately unhelpful. Rose had told her at the diner about how he'd planned to smuggle them all to safety while he still thought English would follow the plan at face value. Rose also said Dave had been an idiot to believe anything the man who held his identity hostage told him, which Jade couldn't argue with either. It seemed to her though, that Dave had fallen into a river of circumstance and hit every rock on his way to the 80ft waterfall at the end, and through stubbornness, refused to let anyone try to pull him out lest they fall in with him. To say he lets others fend for themselves was unfair. Even now, she realized with a start, he was keenly paying attention while she contemplated personal affairs and stared into space.  
  
"...48 hour time allowance to meet his demands for money is our best asset. We sneak our people in and break his blockade, and protect our building," one of the commanders was saying.  
"Then they are trapped like we are. Obviously he knows he has the arsenal to pose a threat to us. I say we attack him from both sides. He will panic and make poor choices, raising our chances of success," argued another, her hands on the table clenched. They had been at this for a while.  
"He will expect that, knowing some of our people are outside his perimeter. If we can get them here undetected, we can surprise him with our numbers."  
"Numbers he is anticipating anyway," pointed out a third.  
  
"What if they don't attack the enemy or sneak in?" Chimed in Dave suddenly. Jade was half asleep again, and it took her several seconds to realize it was him that had spoken. "Just distract him, draw his attention, and force him to split his forces or take a loss. Divide and beatdown or whatever."  
"I'm sorry, who is this?" asked the female commander, looking about as tired as Jade felt.  
"Er. Red, I guess? I used to be one of English's guys," he admitted. Jade saw a person nearby look at her, and whisper what sounded a lot like 'oh, _that_ guy'. Very nice. Not embarrassing at all. "Long story. I know a heap of his safehouses and where he bases operations. Just take that down and he'll be forced to defend it or sacrifice it on the gamble that he can conquer this building."  
"And how can we ensure the reliability of your information? If you've been planted by English we could be sending units to their doom on your word," said the third commander.  
"The only place English wants me planted is six feet down, trust me," he scoffed. "I'm not kidding, go out there and offer him half the asking price plus my head. He would definitely consider it before declining because he's a desperate, failing kingpin on a desperate crusade to fund his establishment after a little girl stole a breifcase -- look its a long story."  
"I vouch for him," Jade called out, her voice groggy. "English shot him in the arm earlier," she pointed to the bandage on his arm. "I saw it."  
"You both saw English earlier tonight?" Spotlight.  
"Er," Jade glanced at Dave. "It's a long story?" they said, in unison this time.  
"Humor us."

Jade realized suddenly the corner they had painted themselves into. If they found out Dave had been part of the scheme that got them in this situation in the first place, even unwillingly, they'd never take him seriously and might even put him on trial. But really, they didn't need to know the details of it. Ironic that she should be the one protecting him, but the alternative was him being put on trial for falling into that river of circumstance. Which she couldn't allow. Not with his exhausted, homeless little family napping on office furniture in the hall.  
  
"English was originally after Jade's money," Dave started. "I was---"  
"Hacked," Jade interrupted, standing as well and throwing him a look. "English showed up where he knew I would be because he was screening Red's texts. They tried to ambush us at the golf course where Marina's reception was and we got away in one of their cars and made it back here. Like he said," she gestured to Dave, who was watching her carefully. "He must be desperate to resort to this."  
"Plus he hates Alpha. For obvious reasons," Dave added with a shrug. "Do you want the addresses or not?"  
  
The debate shifted to possible courses of action given the new opportunities. While they couldn't completely agree on an immediate solution, their initial order was that they would have someone on the outside scout the safehouses Dave provided and come to a conclusion the next morning. Until then, everyone was advised to have plenty of rest and expect the worst. And then like that, the crowd filed out of the room. She sat while Dave scribbled down a list of addressed, wedged in a corner with the admin officer that had been delegated to collect them.  
  
"So, that's it?" Dave asked her, watching the lady walk away with his list.  
"What's 'it'?" Jade replied, confused. "What did you expect?"  
"I fully and entirely came in here prepared to run to the front line or some shit," he admitted. "Guess i'll just find the library and sleep in it because that's all libraries are good for."  
"Who hurt you?" she sighed. "Come on, let's go get your sisters and find a place to crash."  
  
Once they cleared the bottleneck of the conference room and to the hall, they found Rose and Kanaya exactly where they left them, huddled half-asleep on a bench next to the water cooler. "Are we sleeping or fighting? Tell me quickly, like you're ripping off a band-aid. I believe that would be the most painless way," Rose groaned as they approached. "Sleeping," Jade laughed. "And not in the temp housing. It's alright but i imagine it'll be pretty packed today, since a lot of these people were expecting to go home tonight," she said, not without a very prominent pang of guilt. "Follow me."  
  
She knew the way so well that she could have led them with her eyes closed. Which was probably good because she was dozing off as they walked. Dave was noticeably uncomfortable with the glass elevator, which boasted views of the city as it shot upwards to the permanent residential floors. Jade was long used to heights, for obvious reasons. Kanaya was too tired to look or care, and Rose seemed to be enjoying the view.  
  
The hallways were quiet on her floor. The hall, flanked with doors, curved to the left, and then they took a sharp right at the first intersection. After the turn, she found the eighth door on the right and produced her phone from her clutch, sliding one of two cards out and swiping it over the key card system. With a soft beep, the latch clicked, and she opened the door.  
  
Inside was a small living area. There was a small bench with a microwave, bar fridge and a sink by the door, and a three-seater sofa that faced a TV, and behind the TV was a wall-to-wall-to-ceiling window. John, as usual, had left controllers and wires lying around, and there was an empty glass with a dried milk puddle at the bottom that she knew she'd have to soak and scrub to remove. That _John_ would have to remove, she reminded herself. She'd had too hard a week to be tolerating his messes.  
  
"Sorry about the mess. There's a double that John probably won't be using tonight, and the sofa," she explained. "So um. Fight over them, i guess?"  
"You guys take the bed," Dave immediately volunteered, collapsing over the back of the sofa to land face-down. "I'm out."  
"Oh. You guys don't want showers first?" Jade asked awkwardly. In truth, she wasn't accustomed to having guests over. "If you change your mind, the bathroom in there," she pointed to a door in the south-west corner of the living space. "Towels in the closet. And um, that one's yours," Jade added, then quickly rushed over to peek in John's room. He had, thank god, actually made his bed this morning, and while his desk was a travesty, it wasn't the worst. "I can change the sheets--"  
"Sssh, sweet girl," Rose interrupted, patting Jade on the head. "This is more than enough. We're very grateful after all that's happened that you're still treating us so well."  
Jade blinked. "It wasn't your fault. If it wasn't you it would have been someone else," she said, the words coming out of her mouth before she had time to consider them.  
  
But it was true. If not Dave, someone else. If not now, some other time. The last thing you should be worried about when you're hit by a car is the shade of the car that hit you.  
  
"Some day you will find a lovely mob boss who cares about more than just your money," Rose said with a sly chuckle.  
"Oh, if only i would be so lucky," Jade rolled her eyes. "Goodnight, Rose. I'll wake you if anything changes."  
  
Rose shut the door behind them, and the light under the door went out, and it was just her. Alone. Well, Dave was on the couch, still face-down, but it was more likely than not that he was already asleep. It occurred to her how quiet it suddenly was, after hours of noise. Despite how tired she was, she felt so grimy that there was no way she could get into bed in her current state. So she went to the bathroom, shut the door, and had a shower so hot she looked like a cooked lobster within minutes.  
  
When she turned on the faucet and stepped in, she was entirely prepared to sink to the floor and have a good cry. But she didn't. All her thoughts melted away and she was instead able to find relief in the fact that while things had gotten worse, at least they weren't about her anymore. She hated being anyone's focus. Least of all because of gramps' bank account. Now it was less personal, she didn't feel the odd pressure that she hadn't realized she'd been bundling up. She felt less alone, too. And most importantly, she felt hopeful that she could make a difference in all this without being a target to be protected. In the car earlier, when Dave had freaked out because she opened the window to deal with their attackers, she'd felt like a burden because people worried for her. Regardless, she reminded herself, she had taken down two moving cars! If that's what she could do at the end of a long night, in formalwear, imagine what she could accomplish after a night's rest? She turned the faucet off before she remembered she had just stood under the water and thought about stuff for a few minutes, and hadn't gotten around to the soap bit yet. Water back on, she powered through her routine and wrapped herself in her fluffiest bathrobe and comfiest pajama shorts, selected from the neatly folded pile on the bathroom shelves. John's shelf was empty because he was too lazy to walk stuff back to the bathroom after he used them.  
  
She was toweling water off her ear fur and plodding across the room to her door when she noticed a foreign shape by the window. Dave was sitting facing the window, his forehead against the glass. Jade stopped, and her ear flicked involuntarily, splashing droplets of water on the carpet. He heard the sound and half-turned, rolling his forehead over the glass. "Sup."  
  
Jade tapped her foot, considering for a moment, then plodded over, sat down, and imitated his pose, the evaporating water from her hair forming a misty halo. "Why aren't you asleep?"  
"I'll take 'crushing guilt' for 500, Alex," he drawled. "Thanks for covering for me back there. You shouldn't have, but thanks."  
"I'm still mad at you, probably. I dunno, i feel like i should be??? I get it though. All that stuff you said about people who aren't in Alpha not having options. I can't sit here in this apartment where i live for no monetary cost and deny that there's a difference in our freedoms." She stared down at the street. Hard to believe there were people with guns and explosives down there, waiting for them. "He held your identity hostage."  
"S' not an excuse," he pointed out. "I could have copped it."  
"I'm glad you didn't. I don't know if i would have handled it differently if i were in your shoes, is what i'm saying, i think?" She scribbled a nucleus and worked her way outward to form an atom in the cloud her breath was making. "Its what i call a non-choice. You can technically take two paths, but one path is so self-destructive, impractical or unthinkable that you might as well only have one. When i joined Alpha, i could have hidden my identity. But it would have been so hard to keep it hidden, with..." she flicked one of her ears "...deformities like these. It wouldn't have lasted anyway. So it was a non-choice."  
He considered this for a moment. "But you have a hero name anyway?"  
"Oh. Yeah. There was a space on the form anyway, it felt awkward to be going around with my real name when everyone else had cool nicknames, so...." she giggled at how ridiculous it sounded. Back when all she was worried about was having a cool street name.

  
"You're not deformed," he added suddenly. "I mean, i know its a technical term, but you say it like you hate them."  
"I don't know how i feel. My life would be easier without them. Neither of us would be in this situation if it weren't for how recognizable they are." They weren't the worst thing, she knew. Aesthetically, she got lucky with her physical anomalies.  
"Can't say it ain't interesting though. You come pre-packed with a conversation starter for parties. Halloween is easy, just go as a werewolf every year. And the mailman probably knows if he doesn't deliver your parcels you'll fuck his shit up," he offered, and she snorted.  
"I can hear and smell pretty good too. Maybe that's also why my eyesight is so bad," she speculated. "How do you keep yours on so easily?"  
"I feel like we've had this conversation before," he started, "But i'm so fast i can just put them back on my face when i feel them falling and nobody ever knows the difference. Also, i have a wide head because i have to fit all this brain in here," he boasted.  
"Right, i just forgot the answer because it's so ridiculous. Why didn't you pick a normal mask and make life easier for yourself?"  
  
He drummed his fingers on his leg. "My physical anomaly, in my eyes. I keep them hidden no matter what, just in case i slip up."  
Jade sat up straighter. "Oh no. You don't have goat pupils do you?" she whispered, suddenly curious.  
He snorted. "No."  
"Do you have reaaaaally nice eyelashes?" She prompted, resting her chin on her hand.  
"Yes. But that's just my natural beauty," he announced.  
"You have a third eye!"  
"Shades wouldn't hide that," he pointed out.  
"One eye!!"  
"Are these even real guesses?"  
"If i guess right," she asked, "will you show me?"  
  
He considered her for a moment, then seemed to deflate. She thought he would give in and take off his shades, but instead he put his forehead back against the glass and said, "It wasn't a lie." It took her a hot second to figure out that he was referring to their very tense conversation before getting out of the car at the diner. She didn't say anything so he kept talking.  
  
"I shouldn't have let it get that far but i did. I took that shit situation and multiplied it, and i feel like you came out of this worse because i made it too personal," he admitted. "I'm gonna be honest, i'm starting to think i have a second supernatural ability to royally assfuck everything i attempt in the worst way possible. It's getting harder and harder to ignore that particular pattern. It like, after eight new bank cards you have to wonder if it's the hackers that were the problem, or if you've just been clicking every 'doctors HATE him' ad you come across and hoping for a new outcome every damn time." She could see his face, stoic as always, reflected in the glass. "I'm sorry," he said, genuinely. "If you can't forgive me, that's cool. And don't just say you do to just make me feel better about this whole thing."  
"I don't think you need me to forgive you, Dave," Jade told him softly, blinking at her own blurry reflection and the city lights behind it. "And I do. Don't get me wrong, what happened hurt a lot and your involvement was significant. However.... While I think you made some avoidable bad choices that led to this, you did the wrong thing for the right reasons, and you did everything you could to keep me and your family from the worst case scenario. You have been prepared at every opportunity to do what you had to to keep everyone else safe, even if it meant hurting yourself. That's a concerning habit, by the way."

"But to say my forgiveness is something that can 'make you feel better' would be overstating my influence here! There was a lot more stuff going on with you before i ever came into the equation, and my blessings won't fix those things. All it can heal is us, and our relationship is not the beginning and end of you as a person. I think you need to forgive yourself, too." She saw him swivel his head to look at her, but her eyes just watched the street below. Somewhere down there, potentially hundreds of people were waiting for the word to raid the very building she called home. "What speaks the most is that you're here, not down there."

  
He was quiet for a good few minutes. There wasn't really anything to say, she supposed. The rest was with him. "Do you think they brought tents?" He asked suddenly, turning back to the street. "Maybe they're huddled around trash can fires telling stories about the wars and wondering when the cold, harsh winter might finally end."  
"Would you go back to the dark side if they had smores?"  
"Oh. Nah. 'Course not. Do they... though?" he dodged when she swatted at him for that. "Kidding."  
"Watch it kid," she warned him with a grin. "We're a long way up, and only one of us can fly," she huffed, through the effort of getting up off the floor. "Okay, i think we've marked my glass enough for one evening. I'm going to bed before i collapse," she announced, and extended a hand to help him up off the floor.  
  
He took it and stumbled to his feet, quickly rubbing his hair out of his face. His posture was hunched; exhausted and deflated. Seemed about right from his general tone. Without thinking, she reached up for the arm of his shades. With a start, he flinched back slightly, watching her with a tense stare. Jade's smile slowly spread across her face. "You didn't even use your powers to dodge me," she pointed out.  
"Maybe i did and i'm just so fast you didn't see," he retorted quickly, relaxing to put his thumbs in his pockets.  
"I feel like i would know," she shook her head, her hand still hovering beside his head.

He didn't move away still, and she tilted her head. He shrugged. Taking that as permission, she raised her other hand to lift his shades up on top of his head. The first thing she noticed was how he had very tired eyes. They had the same impish slant that Rose's had, but they were undercut with circles. Lack of sleep was a likely culprit, though she didn't exactly have a frame of reference for his non-tired face to compare to. Given that it was dark, she struggled to see what his supposed mutation was. But the lights outside the building were just bright enough that she was able to turn him by the shoulders toward the window, squint on her toes, and see that the irises she had mistaken for brown were, in fact, red. She could tell by his expression that he knew that she had seen, and looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock. She had said that she had forgiven him, but in this moment, she knew she really had. They were on equal footing now. She held his vulnerability in her hands and she would hold it carefully.  
  
"Hey," she grinned, speaking before he could have second thoughts about letting her see. "You weren't kidding, your eyelashes _are_ to die for!" She tilted her head and folded her arms.  
"Try not to feel too humbled by my glorious and favorable eyelash genetics," he replied, visibly relieved.  
"Hmm," she hummed, dropping back onto her heels and considering him for a moment. "I don't think you should be ashamed of your eyes, Dave, but that's something you've gotta find out for yourself."  
He narrowed his eyes at her and clicked his tongue. "You are too pure for this world, Jade Harley."  
"I know," she shrugged. "It's worked out for me so far."  
  
Before she could overthink it and chicken out, she rolled up onto her toes again and kissed him on the cheek. Though her balance was off, and she overshot slightly and it was more like a kiss on the jaw, she was just glad she didn't topple entirely. "Thanks for trusting me! I'll see you in the morning."  
  
It was all she could do not to sprint to her room, but she made it there in the end. She heard Dave flop back onto the sofa behind her as she closed the door, taking a second to collect her nerves off the floor before falling into bed herself.  



	15. The Day Of Reckoning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this chapter is to dialogue-heavy, but I promise the next chapter will probably be quite the opposite since things are coming to a head now!

Dave was awoken by wind and rain, pounding on Jade's apartment windows at the very asscrack of dawn. 

His first and immediate thought was that he was so hungry, he felt his stomach might eat itself. The second, was that his mouth was so dry that it had likely begun its own arid ecosystem. The third was less of a thought and more of a recollection, followed by his guts doing a kick flip. 

He might not have screwed his entire life up. He might have a chance to fix things and make an actual life for himself that didn't involve criminal activity or asbestos. His promising conversation with Harley the night before clung to his every thought and he couldn't remove it. Even when he thought about how English would probably straight up want him dead, his brain leapt into a frenzy of crafting schemes to prevent it. His current thinking was that if English were to accidentally catch a stray bullet to the face, it wouldn't be the worst thing to happen. Or maybe someone around here with the skills and know-how would take cash to zap English into another dimension and "forget" to retrieve him, thus making him Alternate Dave's problem. Maybe, just maybe, he would get out of this alive.

There was no cold water, but he didn't even care. He was halfway through chugging his second glass when bumping in the next room shattered his illusions that he was the only one awake at such an ungodly hour. Seconds later, Jade burst out of her room in her full grey body suit, flattening out a fold the green frill that circled around the back from one hipbone to the other. Her hair was in a ponytail with her bangs loose, her glasses strapped around her head. She stopped in the doorway to bounce from one foot to the other, testing the tension in her sneaker laces. It took her a few seconds to notice he wasn't on the sofa.

"Oh!" She froze, spotting him finally at the sink, glass hovering uselessly in front of his face. He put it down. "I didn't think you'd be up."  
"The sky was screaming at me," he shrugged, nodding his chin toward the window.

It was odd seeing her in her uniform, somehow. He'd seen her in it often enough, but after their escapades in formalwear, he'd forgotten that she was usually appropriately dressed when taking down cars at speed. Not only that, but he'd never truly looked at her getup before. Not properly, anyway. A good chunk of his experience with the look was from a time when she'd been actively trying to kick his teeth in, on several separate occasions. 

Looking at it now, it was efficient, but not without its flair. The half skirt thing took the edge off it, preventing it from looking too military. Yet looking at the grey, it seemed to swallow her in a way he couldn't quite pinpoint. "You should make it glittery."  
"Hmmn?" She hummed, looking up from adjusting her cuff to raise an eyebrow. "Make what glittery?"  
"Your costume. The black glitter suited you. And it would distract your enemies, you'd be like a walking disco ball," he quickly tried to explain, realising how dumb the idea was. "They'd be all, 'oh, is that the literal fucking sun flying at my face? Oh no, that's no sun, that's--' and then they don't finish because you punched them in the throat while they were distracted."  
"Well... it wouldn't be very stealthy," she laughed. "But who says dress uniforms can't be a thing!?"  
"Patent that shit," he instructed firmly.

She seemed to start, as if remembering why she was in the room. "Ah. Alpha has called a meeting in an hour. They expect all able fighters."  
"Oh." Dave turned this information over in his head. Best case, they had decided to remove English's blockade with force. Worst case... Well, there were a few equally bad reasons why Jade might be expected downstairs in uniform. "Any news on John and the others?"

Jade pressed her lips together and shook her head as she made her way over to the kitchenette to lean her hip on the bench beside him. "John sent me a text at three-forty, after we were asleep. He said he was being asked to stand by for orders, but he wasn't allowed to keep contact because networks might be compromised."  
"He's not allowed to tell you he's ok?" Dave clicked his tongue.   
"That's the thing. I know he probably would have tried to anyway. So. Now I get to stress about that," she heaved a long sigh. "Anyway, the meeting. Are you guys coming?"  
"I... Wasn't aware that I was invited," he replied honestly. "I think--"  
"Do not go to that meeting," Rose insisted. "Either of you." 

She stood in the doorway, her hair standing at odd angles and her arms folded over her belly, as though trying to hold down vomit. Her eyes were wide and alert.

"I don't understand--" Jade began, and Dave realized she had never seen Rose's power in action.  
"I glimpse what may come to pass. It is vague, and not always literal, but I do what I can with the information it provides. This is me, doing what I can, by telling you both to sit this one out," Rose said firmly, slowly unfolding her arms and straightening her back.   
"What did you see?" Dave asked, calmly but firmly.   
"It's.... Not the most coherent vision I have ever had," she admitted. "I saw a clock, stopped. And... Jade's blood. Copious amounts of it. It would seep out and then recede, like a tide. Finally, it swelled into a massive bubble and engulfed you both and English." She tapped her foot. "I can't make you stay but I can ask you to, as your sister and your friend."

There was a pregnant silence, hanging from the high ceiling and dripping down onto the back of Dave's neck. If Rose's prediction had involved only his demise, he might have disregarded it as only a possibility. It was a bit harder to do that when Jade was involved. She had been on an emotional rollercoaster these last 24 hours, no thanks to him, and now more than ever he felt the urge to shut her in a room and kick down anyone who tried to get inside.

But really, they were already locked in. Instead of a room, it was a building. And he wouldn't be able to kick down everyone that was waiting in the street to raid the building. More to the point, he was in no position of authority or desire to keep her from her own path, and he knew that path would take her downstairs to the fray -- he could see it in her eyes as she parted her lips, trying to find words. 

"Rose.... I think that we all take risks every day. Not a single person down there needs a seer to know that they might well meet their end today, if English doesn't back down," Jade walked over to put a hand on Rose's shoulder. "I appreciate you trying to warn me, but even if you could tell me with absolute certainty that I would die today, I'd still go. If it means saving this tower and the sanctuary it provides, I'd walk to the ends of the earth. Letting this city fail it's people again isn't an option for me!"   
"You really are quite stubborn in your virtue, aren't you?" Rose replied after a long look, searching for some doubt where there was none. Then her eyes slid to Dave, and a sad smile tugged at her lips. "You're too good for him, you know."  
"I'm standing right here," Dave grumbled, at the exact same time as Jade nervously blurted "I don't know what you mean!"  
"Mmhm," hummed Rose, seemingly unconvinced. "In any case, Dave can't fight a turf war in a tux that he slept in. It's quite unbecoming."

Jade turned to him with realization. "Oh, I forgot!" She ran to the bathroom and threw a towel at him. "I know we might be throwing punches in the rain in half an hour, but you smell like stale champagne, sweat and blood!"   
"Thanks," he muttered sarcastically. She gave him a shrug.   
"I'll find some of John's clothes for you to wear. He's wider and shorter than you but he probably has something lying around!" She disappeared into the room Rose and Kanaya had slept in.

"Dave," Rose said quietly, approaching him with a few steps. "Be careful. Look out for her. Maybe.... I think there is a chance that the vision isn't entirely what it seems."  
"Your visions are never what they seem. Cryptic bullshit is what it is," he rolled his eyes.   
She frowned, but didn't retort. "Look out for our new friend, but don't forget to look out for yourself. You're always starving to fill everyone else's plates."  
He recalled the similar sentiment Jade had expressed to him the night before. "I'll be back in your hair in no time. It'd be extremely uncool and frankly embarrassing to be finished off by English after escaping him so dramatically yesterday." He backed toward the bathroom door, laying a palm on his chest. "Ain't nobody killing this bad bitch."

With the door closed behind him, it was a crushing relief to be alone for five minutes. Truly alone, with a lock between him and all his problems and blessings. Five minutes in that bathroom would allow him to exist in a vacuum, even temporarily. There was nobody to hide from in the bathroom. It was usually his favourite room of any home.

He gently placed his shades on the sink and met his own eyes. He tried to imagine not being disgusted, and for once, it wasn't too hard. He could go into the philosophy of assuming people would label him a freak before they had a chance to, but he'd be here all day. Instead, he showered with cold water and was out by the time Jade was knocking on the door.

"I found a few things, I don't know if uh..." She started as he opened the door and poked his head around it.  
"On a scale of one to Meryl Streep, how worthy of me are these garments?" He asked, and as intended, she chortled.   
"I have no idea how or why that scale works, so I'll just hand you the clothes and let you sort it out," she shoved the pile at him and he took it, dragging it awkwardly through the gap. "I tried my best to stick with your color scheme. Couldn't find any capes though, sorry," she stuck her tongue out and pulled the door closed for him.

Not for the first time, Dave reflected that if they weren't about to walk downstairs to a (potential) deadly street brawl, this would have been one of the best mornings he'd had in a long time. He had so many things going for him: A shower that ran hot; he didn't have to worry about his sister; a cute girl, who can and has kicked him so hard he saw Hugh Jackman, but was choosing not to at this point in time; no moldy stains in the ceilings. But a nagging feeling remained that this was all borrowed, that it wasn't really his. That he was above his caliber, and soon the world would pluck him from the sky and drop him back in the mud, where he belonged. He looked down at the little pile of clothes that Jade had handed to him, neatly folded, and resolved to enjoy the flight while he could.

"What is this shirt?" He asked her as he swung the door open, straightening the wrist-length sleeves.   
"Hmmn?" Jade looked up from the sofa, where Kanaya was playing with her ridiculous volume of hair. "Oh um, John helped out at a charity music festival a few years back, and that was the volunteers shirt, with the festival logo," she replied. "He never wears it. Red isn't really his colour."  
"I kinda dig it. I'll try not to bleed all over it," he joked. The dark jeans were a little bit tight but not unmanageable. The pair of old grey chucks he'd been given might have been white once, but they fit.  
"Speaking of," Jade sighed, standing and letting her ponytail trail through Kanaya's fingers before falling to her back. "We have to go."

Kanaya stood and, to Dave's surprise, hugged both of them. "Rose is asleep again, and I think we should let it stay that way as long as we can," she told them, then looked to Dave. "You had better come back to us. I only just found out overnight that my girlfriend and her brother have superpowers. I have many, many questions and many more outfit designs."  
"Spare me," he said, with sarcasm, then clapped her on the shoulder. "Look after her."  
"You don't need to ask me twice," she replied with pride. 

The elevator ride was long. Jade was bouncing on her toes, swinging her arms, and generally finding herself unable to keep still. Dave leaned against the wall with his arms folded, watching her.

"I'll stick with you," he told her, drumming his fingers to a beat in his head. "If it comes to blows, I mean."  
She turned to him, wringing her hands. "Do you think it will?"  
"He's come this far. If he chickens out now he will become a national laughing stock." Maybe she was looking for a more hopeful answer, but he didn't have one for her.  
"Well," she huffed on an expulsion of air, squaring her shoulders. "I guess I'd better prepare for the worst!"  
"Nah, not the worst," Dave dismissed, making himself sound calmer than he felt. "He's lost his best guy."

She was laughing when the doors hissed open, drowning out her melodious giggle with the sounds of commotion.

"What in the hell..." Jade strode into the loose crowd of people, looking among them. Dave followed as closely as he could, weaving between people to keep up with her. She was stopped by a girl in dark green who, quite readily, rattled off information that Dave didn't catch. When she was done, Jade patted her arm, said something with a sincere look on her face, then kept moving. The girl watched him, wide-eyed, as he followed. 

Jade stopped by the mile-long lobby desk, which sat unmanned. Something told him there wouldn't be any visitors to miss the service. 

"Who was that?" He asked, hunching close to be heard above the din.   
"No idea. A fan, I think," she said nervously. "But she filled me in. Apparently, the decision had to be made moments after they sent the summons. English found out they crippled his base last night. He's tightened his deadline."  
"To?"  
"Fifteen minutes ago."  
"Oh."

She tightened her ponytail with a tug. Her hands shook. "But it'll be ok! I believe in us.... And while this is on a bigger scale than anything I've ever had to deal with, all those guys out there have never dealt with so many of us, either! And--" she was interrupted as a woman with a camera shouldered up and practically wedged the lens up her left nostril. Beside her stood a man in a blue suit, hair immaculate. He held a microphone for 715Live, a local news station Dave vaguely recognised from billboards.

"Miss Harley, do you have a few moments?"  
"How did you get.... In here?" She blurted, alarmed. She pressed back against the desk.   
"When there's a story, no blockade can keep me out. Henry Baskins, 715Live. We met after the runaway train incident last year, you might remember?" He flashed a too-even smile at her, one she nervously returned. 

"Miss Green Flash, we are broadcasting live to the nation as your headquarters are besieged by the street gang led by a man known as English. Do you have any comment to make on Alpha's planned course of action?"  
Jade glanced at Dave, then back to the reporter. "I can't speak with confidence, since I have only heard second hand what's happening. We're, um... In a bit of..." She trailed off and swallowed. "English has given us an ultimatum we couldn't meet, and it seems as though he will go through with his threats to attempt to take the building by force. We are here to keep him out, and protect the staff and civilians who were trapped here by the blockade, as well as maintain control of our headquarters."

The reporter seemed happy with her answer. Too happy. Not concerned enough with the dire situation, and too concerned with his view count. It rubbed Dave the wrong way.

"There are reports that you were seen in the early hours of the morning, crippling a pair of cars pursuing you and a vehicle down 18th West. Does this have anything to do with the current situation at the Alpha Headquarters?" He held the microphone to her.  
"I really can't say." She pressed her lips together, and her ear twitched.   
"Why were you being pursued?"  
"I'm afraid I can't say," she replied shakily. "We were intercepted by the vehicles on the way home from a function. That's all I can tell you."  
"You were with others? Did this function have--"  
"Are you going to keep prying all morning," Dave interrupted with an exhausted sigh, standing up off the desk where he had been leaning. "Or are you going to let the professional get ready to do her job?"

The reporter's eyes, sharp as a bird's, turned on him. "Redshift, we barely recognise you without the cape. And with a shirt on, no less!"  
"Yeah, try not to cream your pants," he grumbled. "Oops, can I say that on air?" He turned to the camerawoman. "Can I say 'cream your pants" on air or is that not allowed?"  
"Alright, alright," the reporter interrupted. "Let's keep it clean for the people at home. Can you tell me about your rel---"

The sound of gunshots bounced off the walls and everyone in the lobby flinched as one. Dave ducked and dragged Jade with him, while she looked wide-eyed at the glass pane that was now crumbling. Someone lay on the floor. There was screaming.

"We have to go," she told him, meeting his eyes. "Now. The rain!"  
"What?"  
"The rain! They're standing in the water! Get me outside before anyone can step out!" She grabbed a hold of him and closed her eyes. Obliging, he flash-stepped them carefully through the crowd and out the broken window, where a dozen people stood, half with guns and the other half looking confident enough without them that they must have had powers. 

They started when he and Jade appeared, raising their weapons. But they were too slow, and Jade slammed both hands to the ground, sparks flying. The gunmen were close enough that the shock spread across the wet ground and tore through them, and Dave flashed out of range before it could hit him, too. Their weapons fell and they were crippled, leaving the window free for the people inside to surge forth, sprinting and swooping and, in one case, swimming through the solid ground like Michael fucking Phelps. Dave resolved to ask questions about that later. He got close to Jade again, sticking to his resolve to stay by her. 

"That looked super cool, by the way," he told her as the sounds of fighting began to fill the street. The blockade was moving in to meet the new threat. The rain, now an annoying, sticky mist, clung to his skin.  
"Well if that reporter is any good, maybe I'll get to see it later!" She called back, her face glowing. "Ready to kick some ass with me?"  
He allowed her a smile and took her hand, getting ready to go. "Just tell me where to."

She raised her hand to point, and they flashed into the fray.


	16. In Which: The IT Guy Quits

Jade didn't realize how different it was to be in a fight of such a large scale. When small street brawls erupt, it's easy to keep track of who is where. This? Absolute chaos, where the only true constant was herself.

Well, almost. True to his word, Dave was never out of sight. Every time she took a breath to get her bearings, he was there. Sometimes an enemy she hadn't noticed behind her would fall, and she would turn to find him already on his next target.

At one point, a car had been driven at the fray and was narrowly stopped by a wall of concrete. From which side the defence had come from, she had no way to know.

For now, she was starting to wonder when it would let up. She felled another attacker with a sharp blast of electricity to his neck and a firm kick to the chest. She hadn't fought so many people at once.... Pretty much ever. Her fingers were starting to get a numbish sensation like when, in her summers on the island, she would swim in the ocean until her fingertips wrinkled. She looked at them now, but visibly they were normal.

It was in this moment of distraction that someone took a hold of her ear.

Jade howled in pain as she was dragged off balance, following the tugging on her ear to prevent injury. She hit the ground, her elbow grazing, and had to roll to avoid a kick to the ribs that surely would have broken bones. A woman in yellow and blue stood over her, her spoked boot reeling for another kick. Jade had nowhere to roll, already with her back against someone's leg. She did, however, have 'up'.

She launched herself into the air, the kick falling short by inches. The woman stumbled and Jade flipped in the air to drop on her shoulders, grabbing a hold of her shock of hair and tugging. 

"Not so nice when someone does it to you, is it!?" She yelled with venom, before steering the teetering woman beneath her into the tall man Dave was ducking away from. She toppled over the woman's head in the collision, landing on her feet next to Dave.

"Who do you think is winning?" She asked, panting. "This is a huge mess!"  
"It's hard to tell," she heard him drawl, and she caught him swaying. "Something doesn't feel right, Harley."  
"You don't look right, either," she observed, and noticed a smear of blood under his nose, where he had wiped at it.   
"No, I mean about--" he pulled her toward him and out of the range of a snake, which snapped its jaws inches from her face. 

A young girl, no more than a child of seven, held three stark white vipers, and took a step towards them. Jade couldn't shock her without contacting her (and getting in range of the vipers) or shocking Alpha fighters on the wet ground. Dave seemed to recognize this as well, and before she could notice he had taken a hold of her, they were in a different place, back near the broken window. Dave swayed again, looking pale. A drop of blood leaked toward his upper lip.

"You have to stop! You're hurting yourself!" Jade shouted over the grinding of another concrete wall forming nearby, sending a manhole cover crashing to the ground.   
"Bigger fish, Harley. Something is up with this disco," he shouted back. "It was so sudden, and not as far in English's favour as you would think, for him to act so fuckin' confidently and start it. Also notice how it seems they're going a little.... easy on us? Either English is a raging idiot who overestimated his forces, or we're being distracted. Some Sun Tzu shit, I dunno."

Jade considered his words, slowly retreating both herself and him toward the building. He needed rest. Their shoes crunched on the glass and she looked over her shoulder to see a room in chaos.

It had been turned into an emergency room. People were being wheeled off on stretchers, presumably to the real medical wing. The girl who had pulled her aside earlier to fill her in was on the floor, clutching at a gash on her face.

Dave tensed beside her. Jade turned to him, looking for the right words to keep his -- and her own -- spirits up in the face of such horror. His eyes, however, were fixed on something. She followed his gaze to the elevators, where a dark green coat was disappearing, the doors closing behind it.

"I knew it," he growled, and started across the room. She noticed he didn't flashstep, but they got there soon enough. He mashed the button for the second elevator while Jade watched the counter for the first.

It climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Past the medical wing. Past the residential floors. Past the call centers and the archives. "He's going right to the top!" Jade hissed, her stomach dropping. He was after the man who kept her money for her.

Jade threw herself into the cab and spammed the close door button with one hand, pulling out her phone -- which now had a cracked screen from some blow in battle -- and checking for messages. A missed call from a number she didn't recognize. It might have been John, but she didn't have time to check. She went to her contacts and dialled her uncle.

The phone rang three times before he picked up. "Jade! What's going on?" His punctual, clear tone came through, as usual, at a volume that nearly deafened her. "You're not hurt, are you?"  
"No! Are there guards on your floor?" She asked desperately. There weren't usually, but she was hoping there would be special circumstances in a siege.   
"There are never guards on this floor, especially not when they're needed downstairs. I've been up here trying to get assistance from the real government, but as usual, they are useless in a crisis. We can expect them, guns blazing, sevety-two hours after the situation is already resolved, I imagine. Oh, and John called. He--"  
"It doesn't matter! You need to hide!" Jade cried into the phone. "Hide somewhere, then go for the stairwell when you get a chance!"  
"Pardon, dear? I couldn't hear--"

The line suddenly went dead, and Jade spammed at the redial button. It went straight to voicemail. They reached their floor. The doors slid open to a quiet hallway.

Jade crept out onto the terracotta coloured carpet to face the hall. In it, she could detect a tangy smell that, for a moment, she struggled to place. She had smelled it once before at the golf course. Dave had been right. English was here.

She motioned for him to follow as she made quiet progress down the corridors, following the familiar path to John's father's office. The floor seemed deserted, likely because most of the staff had gone home by the time the blockade set in. With a pang of anxiousness, she remembered again just how cut off they were. With many of powerless civilians just like her uncle trapped with them.

Jade picked up the voices before Dave did. She could hear English's thrumming tone, a rumble that was too vague to distinguish from her distance. The office they were after was at the end of the next hall, and as they turned the bend, she began to pick up sounds better. Something about the banking site. Logging in. Her uncle would have to complete the transfer for him as her legal guardian.

It occurred to her then that the transfer required the network. She stopped short and Dave ran into her back, grumbling a complaint, but she shushed him and dragged him back down the hall at a jog, making two left turns and coming across a fishbowl-like room, all glass walls, showing a u-shaped collection of towers, connecting the whole building to the network.

Jade didn't have a code, nor did she have time for one. "Stand back," she instructed Dave, picking up an artificial plant from the hall. "I always hated these things," she commented, just before swinging it's weighted base into the glass. It shattered, setting off an alarm, and she dove in to begin ripping at wires.

"What are you doing!?" Dave hissed, carefully toeing over the broken glass. "Have you gone completely fucking fruity?"  
"Help me! If we take down the network, English doesn't get a cent!" She cried, switching her tactics to pulling power cords out of the walls.  
"Oh. Touche," he shrugged, and began zipping about the room, cables flying out of sockets in his wake.

Jade had no idea which tower took out what, but she hoped it was enough. She yanked out a few cables that had missed their initial rampage, but she couldn't leave her uncle any longer. English would be getting very angry right about now.

"I swear to god," Jade panted as they ran back the way they had come. "As soon as I get a hold of that money it's getting donated, so I never have to hear about it ever again!!!!"  
"I know this really cool charity, it's called the 'Dave Strider wants a motorcycle' fund," he huffed, slowing with her as they approached the door at the end of a hall. She was listening to the silence. Nothing was being said. This concerned her more than anything.

She burst into a run again, suddenly panicking. Had they been too late? Had her stunt with the network made him angry enough to....

The doors flew open after a violent kick from Jade, and she stumbled into the room to find English with a gun pointed at her uncle, who was standing at his desk, hands on the keyboard.

"Network trouble?" She asked, dashing to her uncle's side.   
"Nice one-liner," Dave called to her, blocking the door. "Drop the gun, English."  
"Or what, Strider?" He scoffed, then turned back to the desk. "Mr. Egbert, I'm losing my patience."   
"Well that's too bad," Dave sighed lazily. "See, the pretty lady and I just had a hell of a time pulling all the ethernet cables out of the network room. And you kind of blockaded the IT guy out of the neighborhood. So. I hope you've got your waitin' pants on."   
Jade saw Dave's form blur, and in a flash he was snatching the gun from English and tossing it across the room.

With a howl of fury, English took Dave by the throat and lifted him. "You have well and truly burned up my fuse, you little shit!" He spat, his face inches from Dave's. Jade started, but she knew she had to get her uncle out first. Dave would flash himself out, and she didn't want to waste the distraction he had provided.

Jade ushered her uncle out from behind the desk and pushed him toward the door. "What about you?" He asked, stopping, glancing at English over her shoulder.  
"We'll take care of this guy. You get downstairs and you hide somewhere he can't find you, got it?" Jade made sure he was running before she turned back to help Dave fight English.

But Dave wasn't fighting. He was purple. English held his feet off the ground, squeezing his neck, a violent, blind fury in his eye. Jade ran at him, her fingers sparking, but he dodged and held Dave in front of him, backing towards the desk, the window behind him streaked with water as the skies opened up anew.

"Looks like the puppy didn't do her homework," English smiled, grinding his teeth as Dave kicked at him. "Mr. Strider here...." He tightened his grip, visibly straining, and Dave made a choked sound. "Has two main weaknesses. One, his power is limited by his human reaction time. Give or take, he takes approximately two seconds to process and respond to sudden events, just like the rest of us. The second... Well, his surname is a little ironic here, because he can't use his power if he can't take a step."

Jade swallowed, unable to meet Dave's eyes through his shades. "It's over, English. Drop him. I'm not letting you out of this room a free man either way. You don't want to make it worse by hurting him," Jade threatened, her stance ready to pounce.  
"You will let me out of this room," he chuckled, lazily hanging his free arm on the back of the heavy executive chair, the muscles of his arms straining his coat.   
"Wrong. You won't get another step toward that exit while I'm still here," she returned with a growl. 

"Hm. Good point. I'd better do something about that." He squatted slightly, and in a sudden, forceful move, he took a hold of the chair and heaved it in an arc, over his head and into the glass behind him. With a great, deafening pop, the glass shattered. Wind and rain buffeted them, and Jade shielded her eyes. She squinted at English. Through the rain, she could see English's silhouette turn. He looked right at her, smiled, and then thrust his other arm out. Dave's feet dangled in the open air, and she could see him kicking. Even in the howling weather, Jade heard English's voice, clear as day. 

"Fetch." And then he let go.

Jade cried out and sprinted forward, planting her palms on the desk to launch herself into the air. She arced right over the gap between the desk and the window, sailing right past English and into the air outside the building.

The wind buffeted her, tossing her around as she tucked her arms and pin-dived after the falling shape below her. Her power propelled her faster and she grew close enough to brush his sleeve as she swatted at him. One more swipe, and her fingers slipped on his wet palm. A third time, and she had him.

Violently, she pulled his body to her and reversed their momentum, her teeth clenched as she strained her hardest to fight their plummeting velocity. It was impossible to tell if it was working with all the wind, but she didn't dare open her eyes, or ask Dave if he was okay, or concentrate on anything but preventing them from hitting the ground with deadly force. She clung to him for both fear and necessity, and she wasn't sure if the screaming was his or her own.

And after what seemed like both an eternity and an instant, with a force that knocked the air out of her lungs, they hit the ground. The fact she was alive to acknowledge that? A damn good sign. 

Jade let out a strangled laugh, Dave coughing and heaving and gasping for air on top of her. His breaths rattled, and she remembered that he had been choking. Odd how easy it was to forget trauma when one was falling out of a top storey window. 

She gently rolled him off her and sat him up, rubbing his back as he gasped. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder and fought the urge to cry. Now was NOT the time. She had not forgotten than English was still up there, likely making his escape now that his plans with the money were foiled. For today. But he was a dangerous man, and just because they avoided giving him a fortune today, didn't mean he couldn't cause problems in the future. No, English had to be stopped. Today. He thought they were out for the count, but how wrong he was. Jade would bring him down herself.

"Rain looks really psych when you're falling with it," Dave rasped, interrupting her thoughts.  
"Please never do that again," Jade groaned.   
"I'll put it straight on the not-to-do list," he announced. His voice was weak, like he didn't have enough air for his words, but he was breathing. "Are you hurt?"  
"Am I hurt!?! What about you!?" She struggled to her feet, feeling the bruises on her back already.  
"I'll walk it off," he shrugged, accepting her hand to pull him to his feet. They were on the eastern side of the building, the sounds of the fight still raging around the corner.

Jade leveled her gaze with his. "We can't let him leave this building. He needs to be off the streets, Dave. We have to stop him!"  
"He'll be halfway down the building by now," he replied. "He's the slipperiest motherfucker I know. All this chaos, he'll get out without us ever knowing."

"It's a good thing, then," called a figure, huddled under a frilly purple and black umbrella, "That you know someone who knows where a people might be, before they get there," Rose threw them a smug smile. "And I'll tell you where English will be, on the condition that you promise never, EVER, to fall out of a high-rise again."  
Dave glanced at Jade with an incredulous snort. "Trust me, that was not n experience either of us are chomping to recreate," he promised.  
"Mmhm." Rose turned on her heel, making her way towards the front of the Alpha building.

"Now, come quickly," she called over her shoulder. "I don't know how much time we have."


	17. Groovemaster

"Why are you being so vague?" Dave asked for the fourth time as he and Jade followed Rose around toward the front of the building. Rose just threw him a look and continued on her way.

Jade had a limp. She was trying to hide it, but she was favoring her right leg. Not for the first time, he had to force himself not to stare in awe. She had jumped out of a high-rise for him. She was soaked, and bleeding, and tense, but it only made her look all the more Amazonian. Hard to believe that mere weeks ago, her only relevance to him had been whether or not she was in his way. Today, she had been the difference between life and death. She had the man who was the threat to her entire way of life, backed up against a deadly fall. And she threw it away to catch him.

It occurred to him, from this thought, that he had never felt so safe. Ever since he and Rose had been on their own, he'd forgotten what it was to have someone who would actively keep him from harm. That had always been his own role. He never would have thought in a million years that Green Flash, of all people, would save his life one day. And distract him so damn much. He had forgotten entirely where they were going.

The fighting was still going strong, though it was a bit more structured now. Whoever had been manipulating the concrete had made cover for fighters to duck behind, either to catch their breath, or to fire attacks over. Rose skirted it carefully, though nobody seemed to notice them in the chaos.

Which meant nobody would notice English in the chaos either.

"Rose, how certain exactly.... Um..." Jade began awkwardly, almost like she could read his thoughts.  
"More certain than anyone else can hope to be," she replied with a long sigh. And then suddenly, she stopped dead. They were about twenty feet from the main fray, and Rose glanced at it dubiously. "He will be here any moment, and then it's all on you. He won't be expecting you. You must take advantage of this." She clutched her umbrella.

Dave narrowed his eyes at her -- not that she could see it, but he liked to think she felt the energy of it. "Does my memory fail me, sister? Or were you not freaking out just this morning that we would kick the bucket at terminal velocity into the sun?" He folded his arms across his chest. "What changed?"

Rose regarded him for a moment, tapping the stem of her umbrella with an index finger. "I won't burden you with what happens if Alpha falls today. I know you will do what you can, no matter the cost. But...."  
Dave waited, but her pause dragged on. "But what?" He prompted.  
"The city changes today, no matter what. This is what history looks like," Rose gestured to the brawling street. "It is messy, and brutal."

Dave glanced at the fray, then at Jade, then back to his sister. "Well, you sure know how to motivate your troops, sister dearest." He clapped her on the shoulder.  
She gave him a soft smile, and surprised him by pulling him into a hug. "No pressure, but I do have to remind you that we're all counting on you. Make sure he doesn't get away unnoticed by this crowd, and everything else will come in turn. I believe in you," she released him, and gave Jade one as well. "Both of you." She let go, gave them a nod, then turned away.

Dave watched her make an arc back toward the building, ducking quickly around the shallow fountains that adorned the entrance, behind the defensive line, and into the building. He nursed a feeling he couldn't place, though it lay somewhere between uncertainty and dread. They had been correct about one thing; if the three of them could traipse around to mere steps from the conflict unnoticed, there must have been a billion ways English could sneak away. He hoped this was the right one. Whatever "this" was.... As far as he could tell, they were standing on a patch of pavement just like any other -- wet, miserable, and covered in lumps of dried gum.

Jade was hovering in the air, the tips of her sneakers merely an inch from the ground. She had her hands poised and was scanning their surroundings, her green eyes sharp and her wet hair plastered to her head. Her ears flicked every now and then, and he wondered if it was an involuntary reflex when water got in, kind of like a sneeze. When this mess was over, he'd ask.

"I don't see the chucklefuck anywhere," he called to her, doing his own searching. The grinding and crashing and shouting of the battle was almost enough to drown him out.  
"Just keep your eyes peeled!" She instructed, though after another minute of searching through the veil of pouring rain, she glanced at him anyway. "Dave, if something bad happens--"  
"Nothing bad is going to happen!" Dave called back over the rain. "There are no windows to throw anyone out of this time. He's not going anywhere, and when this is all over we are going to have cake for dinner because we're adults and cannot be legally prevented from doing so. Deal?"

She was going to reply, but her mouth hung over as her ear twitched. It wasn't a water twitch. He knew by now the difference between that, and a twitch that meant she had heard a sound. Carefully, she turned, scanning around them, until she froze and skittered a few steps back. "The manhole! He snuck out underground!" She exclaimed, and ducked straight into a defensive stance.

Dave stood by, watching the ground. It was long enough that he was about to call her crazy, but in that moment, the metal plate bumped and lifted, sliding aside, and out crawled a man in a black high-neck sweater, followed by the big man himself. Dave had been in that gang for god knows how long, but never in his life had he seen a look on English's face like the one he spotted when he looked up to see the drenched teenagers he had just dropped out a window, waiting for him with less-than-impressed looks on their faces.

"Should have stayed with the sewage gremlins. You'd fit right in down there," Dave deadpanned.  
"I thought I dealt with you," English growled, crawling out slowly to stand at his full height. "Before, you were an annoyance, but do not be actively in my way or I will end you in an instant."  
"You already tried ending me. And I will be leaving you a scathing Yelp review for that one, buddy."  
English rolled his eyes. "Santo, kill these cockroaches."

The man next to English moved so quickly after the order that Jade barely got out of his reach, his fingers slipping on her rain-slick forearm. Immediately after evading the first grab, she went for English, but Santo was there to intercept her as her target began to back away. Already, English was plotting his route to slip away unscathed.

Worse, the crowd was shifting into a panic. Dave had been right about English's people going easy. Now that he was out of the building and no longer needed Alpha occupied, the stops had been pulled for his escape. Gunfire rattled through the cityscape.

Santo was staying out of Jade's reach as she actively began trying to zap him. He was fast, and she was tired. Still, she could handle herself while he used Santo's distraction to take English down. He flashstepped right behind the crime lord, who immediately turned to sneer at him. They stared each other down in silence for a good few seconds.

"I should have shot you in the head the day all of this started, like the crippled racehorse you are," English told him coldly. "All of this..." He gestured behind him to the chaos and screaming, the gunfire, and Jade kneeing Santo in the nose. "Is your fault. You thought you were saving her? Look at those people," he demanded, jamming a finger at a limp body being carried inside. "Congratulations. You saved her from being used for her money, and then let go. I hope the cost was worth it, Strider. You're the biggest fuck up I've ever had the displeasure to know."

Dave tore his eyes from the chaos and took a deep breath. A part of him felt responsible, it was true, and even a mere week ago those words might have been enough to fell him. But that is what English needed, and it wouldn't be what he got. "You really are a festering heap of piss-soaked fruit cake, you know that? I've seen you "let go" of people, and it involves a body bag. Pro tip, weaseldick, don't bluff people that already know your cards." Anything else Dave had to say could only be communicated through his knuckles.

English took the first punch square on the jaw, obviously not expecting the hit. He turned slowly, and for the first time Dave saw confusion mixed in with his usual silent fury. Oh well. If English had been laboring under the assumption that Dave was above hitting him, that was his prerogative.

English made a fast recovery, but not fast enough for his massive fist to connect with Dave's nose. While Redshift was notoriously cocky, he wasn't stupid enough to get in the way of those swings. Rumour had it that English had been boxing in pits since before Dave was born.

He waited for English to swing again, then flashstepped so his opponent would tip forward, with no victim to punch all that forward energy into. Now that he was off balance, all it took was a good kick from Dave to send English sprawling. He rolled to defend, but naturally, Dave was faster.

Dave delivered a swift kick to his opponent's ribs, and the man keeled with an angry bellow of pain. His free wrist got stomped, his stomach received another kick, and before he could get up, Dave crouched and punched him square in the nose. English's head jacked back into the pavement, and he lay still.

Dave found himself struggling to keep from hitting the man again. A burning anger had begun to seethe within, and if he allowed himself, he'd kill the man where he lay for all the trouble and pain he'd caused.

Jade was standing over her own unconscious opponent, but her eyes were on the larger fight. It still raged, although many of the gang members were now pausing to stare at their unconscious commander. Jade turned her head and glanced between Dave and English.

"We have to get them to retreat!" Jade shouted. Without waiting for him to respond, she lifted herself over the crowd and dropped out of sight among the chaos.

"Oh yeah, no, that's fine," Dave muttered to himself, using his foot to roll English onto his stomach. "I'm Jade Harley and my expectations of the decency of strangers is unrealistically high. Come into battle with me, Dave, just leave the dangerous mob boss to have a nap. He'll be a good boy and stay where he is," he ranted in an angry mutter as he took a hold of English's shirt cuff under his coat and gave a laborious tug, tearing the sleeve off. He pulled it off the man's beefy arm and twisted it, then began to awkwardly tie English's wrists together with the makeshift rope. "We're both injured to shit and literally fell out a window, but we need to fight these gangsters instead of going to a hospital. I'm really cute and I smell like a magic forest all the time so you're going to do it anyway, even though you'll spend two minutes mocking the stupidity of the idea first."

Dave wasn't the best at knots, but he managed to secure English enough that if we woke up, he wouldn't be getting away in a hurry. Unless he rolled down the avenue, which would be hilarious. At a jog, Dave began to weave his way into the crowd, avoiding confrontation and focusing on finding his furry.

She was surprisingly easy to find, hovering more often to take pressure off her ankle. She was also not fighting, so much as she was weaving through the crowd and zapping anyone fighting Alpha members, giving their opponents a chance to overwhelm. And it seemed to be working. Dave had to make his way over several writhing bodies to keep up with her, providing his own assistance where he could. At one point he had to kick a man off a boy of about fifteen, just in time to save the latter from having his throat cut. Dave stomped on the man's wrist to force the knife from his grip. The man tried to say something that might have been "traitor," but a swift kick to the face had him out for the count before he could finish.  
"Watch yourself. These guys don't fuck around," Dave warned the teenager before setting off again, having lost sight of Jade during his altercation.

She was on the ground now, and he found her ducking under a punch to land her own and jolt her adversary with electricity until the woman collapsed at Jade's feet, groaning. Dave jogged up to her and she fixed him with a serious, but confident look. It was hard to tell who was who, but the battle was dying down. A lot of the vehicles in the distance were gone or unattended. The invading force was starting to crumble, and English had failed to get his payday.

Dave relieved a man of his firearm, dropping the clip out and throwing it right at the man's face. It hit him between the eyes and he dropped like a rock. Satisfied with his maneuver, he turned to Jade, who was helping an Alpha member wriggle out from under an unconscious body.

"Tell me you saw that," he called out as she sent her friend on his way. Jade turned and shrugged. "God damn it Harley, that was my coolest takedown today."

A grinding sound caught their attention. A massive man, presumably with Alpha, was tearing the legs off one of Vriska's remotely piloted spiders. He had no idea when it had showed up, but it clearly hadn't lasted long.

"Reminds me of our first fight together," Jade laughed as she jammed her fingers into a gangster's side, shocking them so the Alpha woman who had been battling them could perform a quick takedown. "That time I saved you, remember?"  
Dave yanked another Alpha fighter away from a punch that would have landed on the back of his head. "You know English made me and Vriska fight because he got intel on your patrol shifts and knew you'd come rushing to my aid, right?"  
"I suspected that might have been the case, yes," she replied truthfully, taking a moment to catch her breath with her hands on her knees. "Am I that predictable!?"  
"Yes." Dave watched her from a few feet away. "Never change."

A shift in the crowd around them alerted Dave, and he looked up to see English standing in the crowd. Staring at Dave, with fury in his eyes. English stood no more than ten feet away, his approach through the throng of bodies having concealed his approach. Dave tensed, waiting for English to launch into some monologue about how he was going to kill them. But he didn't.

He raised his gun, and shot.

Dave's power buzzed as a reflex, but without a coherent purpose to guide it, it was a useless fizzle that arrived too late to intercept it anyway. Dave followed the gun's angle and searched his chest for wounds, but miraculously found none, and suddenly, Dave was elated in the strangest way. On the brink of laughter, even. That English had escaped his bonds, entered the fray instead of running away, and sought Dave out with a vengeance, only to waste his element of surprise by missing the shot. The laugh never came, though, for at the same moment Dave realized English's satisfied expression, he heard a scream from behind him.

He whirled, his heartbeat jumping to his ears. Jade wasn't where he had left her, standing a few feet behind him with her green eyes gleaming with the rush of the fight. She was on the ground, with several panicked people leaning over her. And perfectly in the middle of her forehead was a small, circular void, leaking blood onto her eyelashes, her stark white fur, her hair. She stared unfocused to the sky. English hadn't hit Dave, because he wasn't aiming at Dave.

Jade was dead.

Dave's entire body seemed to thrum and pitch, as if the conflict between running to Jade and running at English was physically tearing him in half. All critical thinking fell away, leaving only a primal scream of anger that might have been in his head. He had no way of knowing. He saw everything happen backwards: he saw Jade's body rise off the cold pavement, her blood snaking back into the wound, the bullet travelling backwards from her skull. It drifted back, back, past Dave's face, back towards the barrel of the glock. It was his brain leading him to the one responsible. English.

Everyone around them stood frozen in a haze of red, as though a blood moon's eerie light had washed over them. Dave didn't have the presence of mind to acknowledge them as they watched on. He followed the bullet at a run, though it was a like running in a dream. The bullet travelled for what seemed like an eternity, until it sucked back into the barrel. This was where he needed to be. He took a hold of the firearm, the only thing on his mind being to take it from English before he could shoot again. Dave wasn't sure if he was flashstepping or working off some kind of furious adrenaline, but either way, it worked.

He wrenched the gun free of English's grip as time seemed to speed up again, his slow, hazy movement becoming faster until he was throwing punches at full speed. Once across the jaw. Twice. A spartan kick to the gut. With a methodical perfection fuelled by his greif and fury, Dave raised the gun as English reeled from the kick. He squeezed once, and shot English in his right thigh. Next came the other thigh, in the exact same spot. English fell to his knees, his bloodied face hanging in shocked fury. Dave had never given less of a fuck. He roundhoused his shoe into the mob boss's face, sending a tooth skittering across the ground. But English stayed kneeling, his breaths dragging. Dave raised the gun again, this time pointing it at English's skull.

His brain wasn't working right. He was tired, furious, heartbroken. There was no coherency and no anchor. But even in this state he knew that he couldn't miss from only a few feet away. The street seemed to hold its breath, waiting for him to squeeze the trigger and deliver the execution of the man who had caused all this. Some part of him whispered that he wasn't a killer. It sounded like something Jade might have told him, if she were still alive. But she wasn't, and it was this man's fault.

English held Dave's gaze. Dave pushed his shades up, squaring his own eyes upon the man at his mercy. All it would take was one moment and English would die. This would all be over, their lives forever altered. His hand shook as he held the weapon level.

"Don't!" Shouted someone through the haze. It sounded like he listening to all noise underwater. "Don't shoot him! You're better than he is!" Dave blinked. His whole body thrummed with the force of his heartbeat. He felt a hand on his shoulder, gentle. "If you do this, he will rule you forever. "

With groggy surprise, Dave realized he was hearing Jade. Maybe it was her spirit, looking out for him. Better than he had looked out for her. If only he had noticed English sooner. If only he had been better at tying knots. If only he had been better, she wouldn't be dead.

"Dave, snap out of it!" Called the ghost of Jade again, and he followed it. Maybe he was dead too. He turned his head to find her beside him, her hand on his shoulder.  
"He shot you," Dave told her uselessly. "He doesn't deserve the air you breathed."  
"He..." She furrowed her brow. "I haven't been shot." She looked down at herself, as if to make sure.

It couldn't be real.... But he could feel her hand. He could smell the magic forest scent on her. The gun sagged and slipped out of his grip, clattering to the ground. He took a hold of her head with both hands, running his thumbs over the spot where the bullet had pierced her skull. Only smooth skin met his hands.

"He shot you," Dave insisted again.  
"I'm not dead," Jade replied calmly. "Dave, I think you need to sit..."  
"You were dead. I saw you," he whispered, vaguely aware of a stunned audience watching them. "I saw you."

She took his hand, pressing his fingers to her neck. Beneath his fingertips, her neck pulsed with her blood. Alive.

****_Alive._

Like a truck, fatigue hit him so suddenly he nearly stumbled. His vision blurred, and he slumped info Jade's arms, feeling her warmth as the familiar feeling of a nosebleed tickled his lip. His head throbbed so badly that he could scarcely feel anything else. "D--Red!?" He heard her shout, as she lowered him to the ground, barely remembering to use his fake name. "Stay awake!"  
Dave's consciousness ebbed, and he cracked his eyes to see her patting his cheek urgently. "Only if you promise to call me Groovemaster..." He whispered.

His head was in her lap, and it was comfortable. He allowed himself to drift off, allowing himself to believe, for once, that everything would truly be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will start by apologizing for what I just did to you! There is one more (probably long) chapter to go, and I will resolve everything there. Sorry if this chapter got a little confusing. Attentive readers of chapters 4 and 12 might have picked up on hints as to what happened here.


	18. Time and Space

_It was sunny, late in the afternoon. Jade sat on an empty shelf in her atrium, her eyes fixed on the view outside the building. Blood red dahlias grew on the shelves next to her. They looked so silky they could almost be liquid._

_A figure sat across from her. She couldn't see his face in the glare from the approaching sunset, but the light caught his hair and made it shine like pale gold, and she knew exactly who it was._

_"I knew I'd find you here," he said, his voice an effortless drawl. She loved the sound of it. She could listen to it all day._   
_"Am I that predictable?" She asked, as he closed the distance between them, his steps leisurely. He was in no hurry, for the two of them had all the time in the world._   
_"Yes," he told her, his hands resting on her cheeks and jaw. His nose bled. It poured into her lap, hot and sticky, trickling to the floor. "Never wake up."_   
_"Huh?"_

"Wake up!" The voice jolted Jade from her slumber. Rose narrowly avoided an accidental headbutt to the nose as Jade's head flew up. Her cheek felt numb where it had lain on the stark white hospital sheets, and her palm was sweaty. Her heart did a jump in her chest as she looked up at the bed, hoping to see him awake. But as he had been for nearly three weeks, Dave remained unconscious.

"You have to get ready," Rose reminded her quietly, after taking a moment of her own to regard her comatose brother. "You don't have to go through with this, Jade."  
"I want to," she rasped, her voice froggy from sleep. "It's the least I can do for him."  
"Very well. Come," Rose put an arm around Jade, gently prying her from the bedside.

The car ride downtown was quiet. Jade sat in her new dress costume, the black glittery finish dancing in the light through the car windows. Kanaya had presented it to her days ago, and Jade had cried like a baby. Now, she had herself as composed as she would ever be.

"Miss Green Flash, thank you for joining us," began Henry Baskins, seated across from her in a red suede chair identical to her own.  
"Just Jade is fine, Henry," she managed, trying not to visibly shake. She could barely see in the bright studio lights.  
"Jade, perfect. The last time we spoke, you were in the midst of a gang attack on the Alpha headquarters. The criminal known as English was apprehended at the end of a fast-paced brawl that left the street in shambles. Many say that the absence of English on our streets will only encourage other criminals to take his place. Underlings in English's empire, rival gangs, or even the phantom releasing the personal identities of your Alpha colleagues in past weeks -- any might prove to be worse than English. What are your thoughts on this?"

Jade had to consciously prevent herself from wringing her hands in her lap as she thought about her answer. "Well," she began, speaking slowly to buy time, "To simplify it a bit, imagine if we let purse snatchers run away with handbags. Why bother giving chase? If we return it to it's rightful owner, someone will probably just try to steal it again next week. It sounds silly, doesn't it? People like me.... We aren't here to maintain a criminal status quo. We're here to keep this city safe when nobody else will, and we will go through as many crime lords as we must in order to achieve that!"

Henry Baskins gave her a reassuring nod before the feed switched back to his camera. "Indeed. I understand English is to face trial in two weeks on countless charges -- though, far fewer than he likely deserves. Will you be attending?"  
"No," Jade answered firmly, glad for an easy question. "I've given my statement as best I can. It's now in the hands of the state -- I've had enough of English to last me a lifetime!"  
"I'm sure you have. Unfortunately, the prosecution may face a hurdle as they miss valuable testimony from Redshift, who was formerly on the inside of English's operation. Can you tell us anything about his time in the gang, as well as his current condition?" Jade could see in his eyes that his question wasn't as surgical as he made it sound, and she was swiftly reminded why she had avoided this sort of thing for so long. Dave wasn't here to push Henry Baskins off her this time, though. She'd have to fight him off herself to get to that cheque.

"Unfortunately, I don't know much about his time with English. Red once described English as a violent man, even towards his own people, and my own impression is that he is terrifyingly methodical. English is a strong man, sure, but his real bite is knowing how and when to play his cards," Jade answered confidently. That one had been rehearsed a bit as a question she knew she might be asked. It had been presented to her differently than she imagined, but it worked all the same. "As for Redshift's current condition... He remains in a coma. Physically, I'm told he's recovered almost entirely, but.... Well, as his sister put it -- 'the brain is fickle.'"

Henry leaned forward, and he reminded her, somewhat, of an eagle spotting a mouse in the grass. "Footage of the incident is scarce and unclear, but most accounts say he collapsed after exhibiting some phenomenon related to his powers, and hasn't woken up since."  
"I don't actually remember the phenomenon you're referring to. My perception of those moments seem to be.... Slightly off-key compared everyone else's," she admitted.  
"Do you remember being shot in the head?"

Jade swallowed. Three weeks, and the strong implication by most witnesses that she had been shot (and then un-shot) still gave her shivers. "I don't. I remember English pointing a gun at me, and then Red was taking the gun off him. The rest you know." She forced herself to relax, adjusting her posture slightly. "The current working theory is that Redshift's power to manipulate time has broader limits than Red believed it did. In a moment of panic he triggered something. Unfortunately, his power has always had a taxing effect on his brain." Jade steeled herself. "This time it appears to have done some damage."

"Earlier you quoted Redshift's sister. Are you familiar with his family?" The eagle look was back again. She felt as though she was being herded, whittled down.  
"Only his sister." To be asked to divulge information on someone else's personal life was causing her stress, so she kept it as vague as she could.  
"Safe to assume, then, that you know of Redshift's true identity?"  
"I do."

Henry leaned forward slightly. "If you don't mind the conversation taking a more personal turn, I'd like to talk to you about your now-expired rivalry with Redshift. Four months ago we saw you two fighting quite violently atop a moving mack truck. Most witness reports of your interactions placed the two of you as enemies, albeit in unusually good humor. Next thing we know, Red's flashing his abs on the street and you're suddenly very chummy. What changed?"

That one... Was ridiculously difficult. She had made the decision to keep Dave's role in English's failed attempt on her inheritance a secret. There was more than enough evidence to put the man away, and while the betrayal had been difficult to process, Dave had more than earned her trust back. Plus, by her count, it was her turn to do the saving. She had meant it when she had resolved to help Dave turn his life around, and that started now. Even if he never woke up, she would make sure his reputation warranted all he had sacrificed.

"I had actually been on his case long before that incident -- which, by the way, was not what it looked like!!! His involvement in English's gang was motivated financially, and i think I saw that and tried to get him to turn himself around. He was in a bad situation and that was the only way he could make rent." She took a deep breath. "I actually think that is a hugely underappreciated issue with our city. People like English get powerful because there are people like Red out there, who have so few options that they will join cartels and gangs to keep food on the table. Our city is in a terrible state, as is our country, and privately funded law enforcement like Alpha can only do so much to pick up the slack. People fall through the cracks every day, and while it isn't fair, it's our reality! Alpha can't do much, but talks are already beginning to organise soup kitchens and food drives."

Clearly more answer than he had bargained for, especially for a question about the dynamics of a personal relationship. Henry took a few extra seconds to nod before posing his next question. "That's all really good stuff, very great news. Getting back to Redshift, though, how close would you say the two of you have grown since his defecting from English's employ?"  
"Pretty close! A lot of the stuff I just said is actually perspective I developed from experiences he shared with me. I'm grateful for it and I'm glad we don't have to fight anymore."  
Henry seemed dissatisfied with her answer, though he didn't vocalise it. "You assure us that the photographs taken after the bridge incident were innocent in nature. However speculation persists, particularly motivated by footage of the moments before his collapse. What do you say to those rumours?"

Jade had to resist the urge to get mad. Henry had brushed past her social commentary to talk about her love life. She had to remember that she wasn't doing this for exposure, she was doing it to get a check that would cover a potentially cavernous hospital bill.

"Unfortunately, Red and I were a little bit too busy amongst all this English mess to set aside time to talk about anything like that," she replied truthfully.  
"You mentioned that it's unclear if Redshift will make a recovery at all. How would you feel if this came to be the outcome of his condition?"  
This question, she genuinely considered for a moment. "Crushed," she replied sincerely. "Sometimes you meet people uproot your whole life, but you don't try to set it right again, because you like things better than they were before. It's a little like that. It would be sad to exist in a world he helped make, if he's not in it."

Henry nodded solemnly, offered some empty condolences. "Thank you so very much for your time, Miss Harley."

After the cameras turned off, and Henry rolled off to the dressing room without another word to Jade, she took a moment to collect herself. Her hands shook now, and she had an odd sense like she was being stared at, even though every person in the room was busy with their next tasks.

A manager came over to her to help her take off her microphone, its box pinned to the back of her collar under her hair. "It's gorgeous," commented the woman on her thick, wavy locks.  
"Argan oil and silocone-free shampoo and conditioner," Jade told her absent-mindedly.  
"I'm sorry he is so pushy. You did a very good job," the woman told her as she bundled up the cord of the mouthpiece. "And as promised, the money will be wired to your nominated account within a few working days, depending on your bank."

Jade sighed and nodded. That was all she had to worry about -- the money would be in Rose's account by the end of the week. She was escorted out of the building by the same woman, who asked Jade to sign her employee card before she left.

And then, as if she had never left, Jade was back at the hospital in the Alpha building, sitting at a sterile bedside. Her interview was already playing on the televisions, muted with captions. She looked so washed out on camera, shown talking between shots of Henry, the Alpha battle, and the blurred, broken footage of a bullet leaving her own head. Looking at herself on a screen, Jade realised for the first time how tired she was. Her entire body ached.

She turned to the bed, where Dave's eyes remained closed, his breathing steady. She waited a few moments, as if she would miss him by seconds if she left now. But he lay unaffected. "I'll be back," she promised, squeezing his hand. "Rose will be by this afternoon. Hang in there, Groovemaster." Even when he was comatose, he somehow managed to make her crack a smile.

She didn't fully realise that she had been sleeping away from her apartment until she saw the state it was in. There were empty soda bottles covering the coffee table like a plastic metropolis. The sink was full of dishes, and the whole place smelled like three people had been crammed on a sofa together for days -- which seemed about right, considering they were still there. John, Justice and Grey, of all people, were playing a fierce round of Mario Kart.

"Oh my god, I'm requesting a new roomie," Jade blurted. "What have you done to our poor apartment!?"  
"Before you get mad," John called over his shoulder, "I'd like to remind you that you let strangers sleep in my bed while I was locked out of my own neighbourhood -- which is kinda indirectly also your fault. So."  
"You are a monumental asshole," rasped Grey, at John. "That blue shell was undeserved."  
"There is no such thing as an undeserved blue shell," cackled Justice, whose Shy Guy was currently driving into a wall. Jade decided not to question it.

"Wanna jump in?" Asked John as he crossed the finish line in first, passing Grey. "It fits four players."  
"No, that's okay." Jade skipped to the fridge, thankful that her bottle of water was too un-sugary to have been trifled with by any of them. "I need to wash the smell of gutter journalism off my skin, and then have a craaaazy nap!"

Of course, nobody seemed to be able to leave her be ever since it happened, and John ambushed her as she was leaving the bathroom. "How is he?" He asked, all seriousness.  
"I think he would be better if you cleaned the apartment," Jade stuck her tongue out.  
"And I think you're dodging questions," John clicked his tongue. "It's okay to be upset."  
"I don't know, John! You can only cry so much and get so angry. I have found neither makes a difference." She deflated when she saw his awkward expression. "Sorry. Guess I'm not burned out on the angry just yet."

John surprised her by pulling her into a hug, patting her back. "It's not your fault. You understand?"  
"You just put a 'kick me' sign on my back and you're trying to comfort me?" Jade pulled away and tugged the paper off her shoulder, balling it up and throwing it between his eyes while fighting a smile.  
"Laughter is the best medicine, Jadey. Go get some sleep. You look like death and I don't think your spine is sitting straight anymore," he clapped her on the shoulder and sauntered back to the couch. He was awfully chummy with Karkat Vantas all of a sudden.

Her room was dark, since she hadn't been home to open her curtains in the morning. She left them for now, feeling her way towards her bed without bothering to dry her hair.

_It was rainy and dark, well after sundown, and Jade was crouched behind a dumpster, waiting on a deal to go down. Nepeta was on the rooftop a few feet above Jade, and Tauros was in their ear on a mic._

_"The second pair have arrived. They're coming in from the w-- uh, sorry east, to the car window," he informed them. Through hacked security cameras, Tauros could see almost everything anyone might want to see in a city like Sburb. Right now, an exchange of money between two street gangs was going down._

_"You ready?" Jade asked, adjusting the sleeves of her newly designed suit._  
_"Of claws," giggled Nepeta quietly. Jade's keen ears heard her real voice echo with the delayed audio in the earpiece._

_Nepeta struck first, jumping off the roof and transforming halfway to land on the larger man standing outside the car. Jade flew up in an arc, spinning in the air and landing in a hand-stand to zap the running car, shorting all its electrical systems, before cartwheeling to the side and landing neatly on the ground. The engine stalled and died without it's ECU to keep it in order. She was able to take the driver down right away through his open window, slamming his head so hard into the steering wheel that the airbag activated. The second man opened his door and ran with the breifcase full of money, tripping directly over the huge cat that was Jade's teammate._

_Nepeta was on the second man in an instant, fighting to wrestle the breifcase off him. Her dark blue fur was almost invisible in the dark and the rain. Jade wasn't worried about her though. She was worried about the second man from the pedestrian pair, who had taken off as soon as his buddy got pounced._

_He wasn't far. Jade heard wet footsteps as he skirted the commotion. "What are you doing....?" Jade muttered to herself, listening keenly to pinpoint the sucker so she could take him down and be done with it. He seemed to jump, his footsteps moving from one place to another. It was hard to tell with all the secondary noise._

_Her skin pricked as she heard, for sure this time, the footsteps go from somewhere far to her 3 o'clock, straight to her six. Jade whirled and ducked, hopping back a step to avoid a punch she was certain was coming. But the jumper hadn't tried to hit her. He stood with his hood up and his hands in his pockets, as if enjoying a stroll in the rain._

_"Party's over there, you know," he drawled, straining louder than a speaking voice, probably not realising that even with the rain, she could hear him just fine when he was only a few paces away. His head tipped towards where Nepeta was darting around her opponent, dodging a baton before taking him down with a leap and a bite to the arm. The breifcase hit the ground with a wet slap._  
_"You wasted your shot!" She called back._  
_"I'm not making any shots. You two seem to have this one down pat. Great job officer, you really showed us this time," he rambled lazily with a hint of an accent, betrayed by his pronunciation of 'I'. Southern, but barely noticeable. Texan, maybe. "Plus, I think PETA would be up my ass if I tried to hit you."_  
_Jade fought the urge to smirk. "Whoa, an animal joke! Very funny and original!" Though the ones she heard were usually uncomfortably sexual, so his was an oddly nice change of pace. Comparatively. She heard a weird slosh, but couldn't place it, and didn't want to turn from the threat to find out what it was._  
_"Thank you, thank you. You can catch my show the next time I slip out from under your nose with a breifcase full of money," he told her casually._

 _Jade tensed, and she realised that somehow, he had fetched the breifcase from where it had landed over fifteen feet away, while Nepeta sat atop her takedown, unaware that the case had moved. "Hey!" She shouted, lunging for the case, but just as her hands were about to close on it, it vanished. A gust of air whispered in her ears, and she whirled to find him standing where she had just been. "You teleport!?"_  
_"Something like that," he shrugged._

 _"Who are you?" Jade asked slowly. She would have to warn Alpha about this guy, who she had never heard of before. They had something of a running database on notably powered criminals._  
_He seemed to flinch at the question. "Uh, Redshift, I guess "_  
_"You don't sound sure."_  
_"Most people don't ask," he threw up his hands, one with the cargo she couldn't reach. She would need to touch him to electrocute him, but he was too fast. Unless...._

 _"I'm Green Flash. My code name, that is," she told him nonchalantly, stalling to keep him there. She held up her hand, letting the green sparks light up her hand. "Because it's green, see?"_  
_"I can see."_  
_"And it's also this thing that happens right at the last moment of sunset, sometimes, when you're looking out at the ocean," she rambled on._  
_"Uh. Fascinating."_  
_"NEPETA, JUMP!"_

_Jade didn't have time to look over and see if Nepeta had obliged. She had no idea how far her lightning might conduct. She just slammed her palm to the ground and let forth her electricity._

_She looked up to find Redshift doubled over, stumbling away from her. Nepeta hadn't jumped, but she hadn't been struck either. Jade realized that the curb between them had likely broken enough of the water up for the charge to fizzle out before it reached Nepeta. And while the shot had his her target, the electricity would have made him clench the case, not drop it. She cursed her oversight, having wasted a good surprise shot for nothing.  
_

_"That stung," he coughed, but was composed enough to dodge away from her when she lunged to grab the case. She raised her hand again, sparking, but he skipped back. "Lighting don't strike the same place twice, Greenie," he smirked ever so slightly, his face more visible now from the dim streetlight. He wore shades over his eyes, despite the darkness."Well, not that this hasn't been fun...." he drawled, and suddenly collapsed toward her._

_Jade caught him in her arms. "Stay awake!" She begged, lowering him to the ground to rest his head on her lap. She gently tapped his cheek, trying to jar his consciousness like she might try to revive a flickering flashlight._

_"Only if you promise--"_

Jade jolted upright in her bed, heart pounding. She remembered the day she first met him. He'd been a cocky annoyance, though it had always puzzled her that he hadn't thrown a punch when he had the chance that night. She'd told him many times how his benevolence was the basis for her personal mission to nag him about joining Alpha. He'd deny that there was any basis, but always proved himself wrong. Right up to the day where he'd appeared out of nowhere to save her from a collapsing bridge.

Jade plodded out of her room as she shoved her glasses on messily, finding the lounge slightly cleaner (but not perfect.) It was dark, and the microwave told her it was 6:05pm. With a start, she realised that visiting hours ended in less than an hour. She stumbled into a clean pair of sweat pants and a racerback tank she usually wore when she boxed, though now it was the first thing on her clean laundry pile.

The small hospital was crowded. Many people only finished work half an hour ago, so she had arrived in time to catch the evening rush of visitors. After the battle of Alpha (as it had been affectionately called), there were more patients than ever, so space was tight. As if to add to the chaos, one of the receptionists Jade had passed just hours ago on her way in from that wretched interview was wheeled past in a chair, huffing and holding her belly. Wide-eyed, Jade realized that her water had broken. Good thing she worked in a building with its own hospital.

She wove her way through the waiting room, where people were signing in. Jade didn't bother, with her residential card in her pocket. Most people knew her in here by now, anyway. Usually the place was pretty orderly, but above the television and chattering of children, she heard a commotion. Not too unusual, especially if there was an emergency involved.

Jade's phone started to buzz in her hand, and she saw Rose was calling. An involuntary pang of dread hit her, even though the news could reasonably be anything. She couldn't help it. Three weeks felt like forever, especially since some coma patients woke after mere days.

A nurse nearly knocked the device from Jade's hand before she could answer it. "He's disoriented. Call security--" she was saying, rushing past towards the commotion. Jade looked up from her phone and nearly dropped it a second time. In a hospital gown, backed against the wall like he needed it to stand, was Dave. Despite all this, he had his fucking shades on.

Jade pushed through the crowd, forgetting the call entirely. The nurse was trying to talk him into sitting down, but he seemed to not hear her. He just flash stepped away from her, catching his breath where she couldn't touch him. He looked horrendously dizzy.

"Stay back, he might be dangerous," the nurse barked at Jade as she tried to walk toward him.  
"He's not," Jade told her impatiently. "We're friends."  
"Regardless, coma patients can be disoriented after they wake, and he really shouldn't be walking around so soon. You're going to have to wait for security."  
"I can handle it," Jade told her firmly, pushing past. The nurse lifted her hands away with a frustrated sigh, muttering something about powered people and invincibility complexes.

She approached carefully. He was leaning against the wall with his head in his hands, breathing heavily.

"Dave," she whispered, not wanting the nurse to hear. "Are you okay?"  
He flinched at his name and slowly lifted his head, peering at her. "Greenie. Your head."  
"I thought we were past all that 'Greenie' stuff," she murmured gently, remembering her recollective dream from earlier. He reached out and grasped her face, not hard, but firmly. The nurse cried out in alarm. "My head's okay, see!" She reassured him in a quiet voice.  
He nodded ever so slightly, touching above her eyes gingerly, as if to make sure, just as he had before he had passed out in the first place. "Jade," he confirmed. "Sorry." His words were slurred, but getting better.

He surprised her by pulling her toward him, tucking her head under his chin. He smelled like disinfectant and the odd scent of his hospital gown, but beyond that, he still had a familiar scent. He kept quietly apologizing into her hair. She knew she should probably try and get him back to bed, but for the moment, he seemed perfectly content to just stay like they were. And Jade didn't mind too much, except the nurse was still watching and the busy waiting room was not all that far behind her.

"I have no pants on," he suddenly said, his grip turning from soft to anxious on her shoulders.  
"I'm afraid so!" Jade fought a chortle and lost. She looked over her shoulder to the nurse, who looked a mix of awkward and irate. "He's fine, can you get a blanket?"  
"I don't need no blanket I need some fucking water," he told her groggily. "It's like the damn Mojave in my mouth right now."  
"Well you sort of haven't had water for three weeks," Jade shrugged.

Dave blanched, and she realised she should have been more tactful with dropping that piece of info. "Three weeks? Holy shit. Three weeks." He ran his hand through his hair. "Will I be able to return to the life I had? What year is it? Who is the President? Am I my own grandfather?" He raised his eyebrows. "Am I the President?"

The nurse came back with a blanket and guided them both back to his room, where he sat down in the chair Jade usually took when she napped at the bedside. She supposed he was probably sick of lying down. She did some tests, checked his blood pressure and heart rate. He was quiet and stared at the wall while all this went on.

Rose arrived three minutes later, nearly knocking her brother out of the chair for how fiercely she hugged him. The three of them talked for the better part of the hour, updating him. He tried to tell them what being in a coma was like, but all he could say was that it was as though he had woken from a dream but forgotten what it was about. Rose had brought him clothes to change into, thankfully.

"They're discharging you tonight," Rose later told him, after speaking with the doctor briefly. "Under normal circumstances, they would keep you overnight just to be safe, but apparently they're short on beds, so they just want us to bring you in tomorrow for a checkup and tell them if you lose consciousness or get disoriented."  
"You're the boss, boss." He nodded his chin at Rose, who seemed unimpressed by his flippancy.  
"The guest apartment Kanaya and I are in has another room, intended for you, I think," she told him gently.  
"Believe it or not, I'm not that tired," he replied flatly. "I could go for a run."

Rose dragged him to his feet. "Absolutely not. You are to take it easy, and not use your powers for a few days at least. If you're good, we'll get you a new phone that isn't bugged."  
"Um, with what funds? Unless you mean one of those string-and-can phones." Jade chuckled, because it was something John might actually do. Rose glanced at Jade then, as they walked to the desk to sign him out of the ward. He scribbled his name and so did Rose.  
"Jade did an interview," Rose finally told him, once he was done signing.  
Dave turned to Jade with a ghost of a frown. "Oh, Little Mermaid. You went to the sea witch after all."  
"Yes, and it was horrible, by the way," she scoffed. "You're lucky I'm perseverant."  
"If you weren't you would have given up on me long before I became a problem," he pointed out.  
"What are you talking about?? You were a problem from day one," she dismissed, grinning.

The walk to the elevators was long. The waiting room was still more crowded than she would like, and people stared at them as they passed. Dave had to hold his sister's arm to keep him balance, still somewhat disoriented. Jade trailed behind, a nagging anxiety nibbling at the corners of her mind. He had a new power, one so intense it put him out of action for weeks. It seemed so surreal that he was suddenly with them again. She had been plagued with dreams lately, and she wondered if this was one of them. But her pinch stung, and she knew it was real.

When they arrived at Jade and John's, Kanaya was already there. Grey and Justice were on the sofa, debating something passionately. John and Dave did something that surprised Jade -- they hugged. It was stiff and awkward, but also genuine.

Jade hung back by the kitchenette, watching it unfold. She knew she should be more excited, but all she felt was exhaustion and nervousness. Exhaustion, because she felt as though she hadn't truly relaxed in days. Nervousness, because now the storm had passed, now that they weren't in mortal peril, Dave might behave differently. He was free to live his life -- with or without whomever he chose. It struck her with an anxiety she thought she had come to terms with.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she scrambled for it. Aradia. Jade hadn't heard from her since she got on her honeymoon flight! "I'll be just a minute, guys," Jade called over her shoulder, finding herself happy to escape from the noise into the corridor. She hit accept.

Aradia led with "We saw your interview!" Jade shut the door to her apartment gently and paced the empty hall.  
"Please don't tell me how bad it was! I've been avoiding it," Jade admitted.  
"I thought you weren't going to do it," Aradia told her, her voice fuzzy from the long distance call.  
"Hospital bills needed paying," Jade shrugged, even though Aradia couldn't see. Then she gasped, and couldn't believe she had forgotten. "Big news! He woke up less than an hour ago!"  
"What??? Why didn't you say something? That's wonderful news," she hummed. "How is he?"  
"Hanging in there. You'll see when you get back," Jade smiled softly. "I take it from the hour that you're waiting for your transfer flight?"  
"Actually, I am. Speaking of, we have to go and find our gate." She sounded apologetic. "We will talk more when I get there, okay?"  
"Absolutely. Have a safe flight, yeah?"  
"I will try, though I'm not the one flying the plane!"

The call ended to Aradia's chuckling. Jade stared at the blank screen for a moment, her hand on the door knob. Ready to go back in. But there was a loud laugh, and she couldn't handle a crowd. It felt like she had been surrounded by people non-stop for three weeks. And now, when the person whose company she had actually wanted all that time was finally awake, she was chickening out.

"Make sure you're stable before you tend to others. Can't save someone else if you're bleeding out yourself," her Grandpa had told her once. Okay, technically he had been explaining bombings to her after they had seen one on television, and telling her what he would do in a situation like that. But she recalled it now, so it must be worth something to her circumstances.

She considered texting John to let him know where she was, but every excuse she could type up came out sounding lame, or overly dramatic. By the time she reached her atrium, she still hadn't thought of anything, so she set her phone down on the bench by the door and climbed the ladder to the second floor.

Because the floors of the Alpha building were so tall, they had divided the atrium into two half-levels. The space had been intended for botanically-powered people to practice, but the larger, lower space was usually used for that purpose. The loft had, in contrast, been unused for years by the time Jade asked about it, and it had been unofficially hers since.

The blooms were all closed now, and she felt her way towards the window with spacial memory in the darkness. The grated metal shelving was packed in most places, but a spot right in front of the window was clear for her to sit. It even had a couple of folded towels for comfort. She didn't sit on it now, though. She just lifted one foot, then the other, to cross her legs where she stood, letting her power keep her afloat. She floated over the shelf and forward, until her knees bumped the glass.

Alone. No noise, just silence. Maybe this was what Dave had been doing, after she had found out the truth, when she found him staring out the window of her apartment. There was certainly a serenity in sitting in the dark. She probably could have taken this opportunity to work through her stress, but she instead let her mind drift to some faraway place where there was no light or sound.

She wasn't sure how long it was until she heard the door downstairs open, her ear twitching and swiveling back on a reflex. She hadn't not been expecting it exactly, but she hadn't been waiting for it either. There was an apprehension. She had no idea what to say to address her guilt, and once again she imagined this is what he must have felt weeks ago.

"Are you trying to be quiet?" She asked finally, getting tired of hearing him tiptoe up the flight of stairs to the loft.  
"There was an attempt," he admitted. "You disappeared down there."  
"I got a phone call," she told him. It wasn't a lie. "Plus, I feel like I haven't been alone for weeks."

He walked up to the bench where she hovered, his footsteps telegraphing his position. He rested his elbows on the bench and clasped his hands together, leaning forward until he was in her peripheral vision. He looked out to the city skyline. "Weirdly enough, so do I."

Jade turned to look at him, curiosity prevailing. "Do you remember us visiting?"  
"No, nothing like that. It's just a feeling I have. And now suddenly I'm missing three weeks of my life and everyone wants to tell me what I missed. It's all... hey Dave, so glad you're back. Wanna hear about all the fun we had while you were peeing through a tube?"  
"Mmhm. Thanks for that visual," Jade wrinkled her nose at him, and he snorted. "They don't... We don't mean it like that. We want to include you, even when you couldn't be there for it."

He contemplated this for a minute. Then, "You didn't have to do that stupid interview. That guy is a chode in every dimension possible," he said with a hint of bitterness. "But, thank you."  
"It's the least I could do. You were only in that hospital because of me," she sighed. "It's crazy what you did, you know."

"I know. Trust me, i'm as confused as you are. I did it without thinking. Just fucking happened." He wrung his hands. "I've never been more terrified in my life than I was when I did it. Maybe that's what the secret is." He looked at his own hands, as if wondering if he could do it on command. "The worst possible circumstances demand the most from us." He closed his fists slowly.

"Maybe so, but please don't try it again! I mean it when I say I would never have forgiven myself if you hadn't recovered," she told him sincerely, placing a hand over his fists gently.  
"I'll promise to never turn back time again, as soon as you promise to become immortal," he sighed, leaning his forehead on top of her hand.  
"That," she whispered after a long pause, her face and chest burning, "is possibly the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. And just think, if someone had told me six weeks ago that it would come from you, I'd have thought they were crazy!"

"Harley, I have something I need to confess to you," he blurted suddenly. Jade was on the verge of panic at such a vague opener. "The cabs thing was me."  
Jade blinked at him, struck speechless by the distance of his statement from what she had been expecting, given the current atmosphere. "What..... Cabs?????" For a moment she teetered in confusion, until it occurred to her.

Months and months ago she had been trying to catch a taxi. She forgot now what the occasion had been, it was so long ago. She had hailed a cab, and it pulled over, only to suddenly drive off again without a passenger before she could get in. So she hailed another, only for the same thing to happen again. She had thought she was going mad, but it happened a total of four times in a row before the fifth taxi finally let her in. It dawned on her now that the four taxis had driven off on her because theu had been snatched by someone who moved so fast she couldn't see them do it.

She levelled her gaze on Dave, who was blatantly trying not to laugh. "You!!!!???"  
"I saw you on the street and decided to mess with you because you were such a do-gooder. This whole ordeal we've been through, it made me realize that one or both of us could have died and I would have never had the chance to tell you how much of a comedic genius I am."

His teeth flashed a grin in the darkness, and Jade dropped from her hover to land on the shelf on her butt. She turned on the spot to pretend to choke him while he swatted at her hands, racked with properly uncontrollable laughter -- the first time she had ever seen him do that. It was infectious, and they ended up doubled over, their cackles echoing in the empty atrium.

Jade finally calmed down and sat with her legs dangling off the shelf and into the aisle, where she nudged him with her foot. "I'll get you back for that, Dave Strider!"  
"Who's Dave Strider?" He asked suddenly, his face dropping. "I know nobody by that name."  
Only for a split second did he fool her, before she realised what he was doing and rolled her eyes. "Nuh uh! It's not happening, not after that cab stunt!" She reached over and stole his shades, testing them for a second to see how dark it was with them on. Answer: very dark. She shook her head and put them beside her, enjoying the rawness of his face without them.  
"You gotta say it," he insisted, planting his hands either side of her knees and wiggling his eyebrows up and down, seemingly unbothered by the theft of his shades. "It was my dying wish, Jade. Would you really deny a man on his deathbed his one wish?"  
"That wasn't even.... You weren't dying then and you're not dead now! You can't play that card. Nope," She put her finger on the tip of his nose and pushed his head to the side, but he just sprang back again, eyebrows still going.  
"Say it," he encouraged, bouncing on his toes.  
"Stop doing that with your eyebrows," she insisted, trying not to look because it would make her laugh.  
"Only if you say it," he insisted, leaning around so his face was in front of hers again.  
"Not happening," she folded her arms and put her nose in the air.  
"Say it and i'll leave you alone," he bargained.  
"I don't want you to leave me alone," she blurted, her filter not fast enough to catch it. They both paused for a second, then she saw him smile from the corner of her eye.  
"Ok. Say it and I won't leave you alone," he amended softly, laughter in his voice. He was so close she could actually hear his pulse.

It felt like an eternity before he gently put his hand on her cheek. She learned toward him and he took the invitation to meet her lips, now almost clutching her face like he was afraid he'd lose it. They had kissed before, but right here and now it was without missing context, without a crime boss out to kill them, without any pressure or urgency. They existed freely now and this is the first thing they wanted to do with it.

It ended both too soon and not soon enough. Jade felt as though she would melt into a puddle of nervousness and happiness all at once. She grinned at him, putting her forehead against his. Even in the dark, she could see a hint of the red in his eyes. It was all she ever wanted to look at. She smiled and sighed, placing her hands over his, where they still rested either side of her cheeks and jaw. How could she resist that face? Maybe all this time he had worn the shades to hide that his puppydog eyes were better even than her own.

Very softly, Jade smiled and whispered "Way to go, Groovemaster."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, I finally got the last chapter written up! The ending is always the hard part of writing a story. As always, I've probably missed mistakes on mobile but I'll trawl through and fix them up soon. For now, I'll just throw this at you because I know some of you have been hanging out for it!
> 
> This has been so much fun and an absolute pleasure. I'd like to thank each and every one of you for reading -- especially those of you who took the time to comment and encourage me! You make it worth it <3 I'll see you guys next time I get a crazy idea!


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